


In that twilight, our choices sealed our fate

by silver_pixie



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood, Consensual Violence, Cutting, Explicit Drug Use, Graphic M/M Sex, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Philosophy, Psychology, S&M, Sibling Incest, destiny of souls, graphic F/F sex, graphic F/F/M threesome, mild violence, referenced/implied serious violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-03-19 15:57:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3615762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_pixie/pseuds/silver_pixie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thranduil had a sister, Arafel. </p><p>Oropher would not suffer an outsider near the throne of Greenwood. As the family prepared to take over the rule of Greenwood, he devised a plan in which Thranduil and Arafel would be presented as the Prince and his soon to be wife. Brother and sister were happy to oblige. They didn’t cling to each other for dear life then, that came later, but they were close. Come what may, they were sure they could endure it together. </p><p>And endure they did, in a way, through the millennia, and into the present day. </p><p>This is their story. Much of it is set in the present day. Interspersed are tracts which represent their memories, which do not contradict the story set by J.R.R. Tolkien only offer an alternative. </p><p>Also meandering throughout the story are some rather philosophical lines to do with souls, purpose, destiny, what makes us what we are, the nature of rights, and wrongs, perspective, division lines, etc. In case of allergy, let this serve as a warning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lines

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of warnings. Thranduil and Arafel are not one-dimensional. To understand them takes some imagination, or a like mind. But they do have a co-dependent, incestuous relationship. They use drugs openly and unapologetically. They use people too. If you don't want to read that, stop here.

“Fuck”, Arafel groans quickly bending over the bathroom sink, reaching for the paper towels with her right hand, blood coating her fingers, for the water tap with her left. Blood mixing with the water. Through centuries… through millennia… time slipping… She blinks the past away. 

She never gets nosebleeds. Never except now. Now that she has exactly four minutes to get this under control before she must be back in the courtroom. Fuck this day. 

Paper towels shoved up her nose, head tilted back, she takes deep, slow breaths, willing the bleed to stop. Most of the time, she can subdue such minor rebellions of her physical body under the will of her mind. 

Then the door opens and Kate, her chief opponent this day, and many others, walks in, two minutes before show-time, into the restroom so far away from the beaten path that everyone’s forgotten it existed, which is why she uses it. Seriously, fuck this day. As if reading her thoughts, Kate begins, “I followed you. I wanted to talk in private.”

Fuck this day straight to hell. Arafel pulls the blood-soaked paper towel off her face hoping the flow has stopped permanently, “Well then stop staring and start talking.”

“Are you well enough to listen?”, the question holds zero concern but plenty of malice. Kate wears a victorious leer gesturing to the paper towel Arafel still holds in her hand, “I mean, did you manage to get your medicine up your nose before that happened?”.

“Never better, thank you for asking. You had a point, I presume…”, Arafel ignores the insinuation, keeping her voice even and her frame still, although she’d love to wipe that grin off Kate’s face with one swift movement of her hand. 

“I did. I would like to propose a settlement. 50 million in 4 payments over 4 years and my client walks away. You will not get better terms than that.”

Now Arafel is laughing. “This is what you stalked me in here for? You’d be hilarious if you weren’t pathetic.” She turns away from Kate, seemingly to throw away the paper towel, but they both know the gesture’s real intent. Kate has been dismissed. 

And she’s livid. She is trying to control her voice, but doesn’t quite manage as she all but shouts at the lead prosecuting attorney, “Don’t you think you should discuss this with your clients before you throw their lives away?”

Arafel is perfectly calm, her expression unreadable, her voice hard, “I don’t need to do anything of the sort. The answer is no. Now let's go. Your handlers will not be pleased if you are late.”

Kate steps into the exit way and sneers into Arafel’s face, “Drugs have clearly muddled your brain.”

Compared to Arafel’s, Kate’s physique is imposing. She is 5’10” with broad shoulders and a muscular body chiseled by hours of strenuous workouts. Arafel is almost as tall, but slender, willowy. She looks tiny in comparison. Kate’s stance is clearly intended to intimidate just as the comment was meant to inflame. Arafel, however, is unphased by either. She fixes Kate with a stare that perforates directly into her core and simply grins showing a perfect row of teeth, then walks through the powerful woman like she wasn’t even there, practically spinning her on her axis. 

Kate, having expected a verbal onslaught in response, is so shocked she just lets her go without a word. What Kate does not know, cannot know, is that Arafel has faced women and men, warriors, much more intimidating than this. To Arafel, Kate posturing in a courtroom restroom is a toy to scare little children with and not a legitimate threat. There’s a chasm between what Arafel perceives as important, or even remarkable, and what other people do. As for inflammatory remarks, people don’t begin to imagine the vast grey seas of her indifference. Threaten her? She might care when you actually dare go after her, with a real knife, one made of iron. Might. 

The case continues for another three hours, with prosecution, that is Arafel, taking the first hour and the defense, Kate and her partners, taking the next two. It would have been longer, but it’s Friday, and the judge is tired and annoyed. Amidst fake witnesses, paid off state officials, and falsified EPA reports, Arafel’s team, against all odds, manages to convince the judge that Kate’s client, a multi-billion dollar international industrial development conglomerate, willingly and knowingly turned thousands of acres of forest into wasteland, and that this has and will impact the survival of multiple species of plants and animals and the health and well-being of humans. The case will go to full trial. They almost never do and are settled, for meager money, outside of court. It’s some kind of victory. 

The defense is irate. Prosecution is elated. Arafel is momentarily happy, but anger and sadness, as always, boil just under the surface of her skin. Wrath of a witness, casualty and adversary to the slow murder of the Earth. She shows none of it. It’s of no consequence. This parasitic, short-sighted species cannot comprehend the damage they do, and does not care. Reason is wasted on them, the only thing they understand is force. Their father was always right about that. 

“How do you sleep at night…” Arafel’s eyes bore through the defense attorney as she finishes putting her papers into her briefcase and turns to leave the now empty courtroom. It’s not a question. Arafel’s expression is half disgust, half wonder, but there is also a touch of something else in the prosecutor’s cold, and derisive countenance, something like sadness. Kate wonders if it’s real. Because the Arafel she expects, the Arafel everybody knows is heartless. People rarely come to know that Arafel is far from heartless, very few find out what her heart beats for, fewer still understand why.

Those eyes are unnerving. Green-yellow eyes. Arafel looks like a she-wolf stalking prey. Kate feels the skin on the back of her neck stand up. And hates the feeling. So she opts for: “Much like yourself I imagine, except her name is Stolichnaya. She’s easier on the nose, and the heart.” It’s not an answer. It’s another veiled threat, and she expects a knife out of Arafel’s well-stalked cabinet to come flying back.

Instead Arafel smiles one of her smiles, the kind that never reach her eyes, takes out a piece of paper, writes down an address and hands it to the defense attorney. “It’s a club. The music’s outstanding. I’ll be there around one.” With that she leaves. 

Kate is left standing frozen in the empty courtroom, note in hand. What. The. Fuck. Was. That? Did she just get invited to a date, or her own murder party? Did she get invited at all? It’s Arafel’s idea of a joke, she thinks, starting to rip the note in half. But she doesn’t finish. Instead, she puts it in her pocket. 

Five hours later, sitting at her favorite bar, some beers in, relaxed and as close to happy as it gets sharing in the typical Friday night banter amongst the regulars she can’t quite remember the day she officially became a member of, Kate has forgotten about the unnerving prosecutor, the note and the entire godforsaken week, that is until she reaching into her pocket for her wallet, she fishes out the forgotten note. It’s 11 pm and …

“Girl, what’s that? You got a date?”, Dave, her work-out buddy and if she had to use a descriptor, a friend, snatches a note from her hand. 

“Or a suicide…”, Kate mumbles. 

Dave is on his feet on top of the bar, yelling at the top of his lungs, “Everybody, our Kate has a date and she needs some encouragement!”

A chant of “Kate. Date.” thunders through the bar, accompanied by several shots lining up in front of Kate, “From the crew, for courage”, explains the bartender. And somewhere between all the noise, the quick infusion of alcohol and Dave’s repeated, “What do you have to lose?”, Kate makes up her mind, rationalizing that it’s not a date anyway.

She takes a cab home, takes a shower, throws on a pair of black slacks and a soft black leather halter top, which shows of her toned arms, steps into black motorcycle boots, grabs her leather jacket and is out the door. No make-up, no jewelry, those are pretenses left for court and law offices. Ear-length curly hair left wet to dry on its own and do what it will. 

She gets to the club at five minutes after one, valets her car and walks inside, a tingle of dread returning, feeling like an antelope walking into a lion’s den. It’s not a feeling she relishes. 

The place is large. It’s close to pitch black with only a limited number of imitation candles providing flickering lighting. And it’s packed. If Arafel is there, she doesn’t stand a chance of finding her, so she heads for one of the several bars, which are somewhat better lighted with additional real candles dripping wax over all available surfaces and the floor nearby. She needs a drink anyway. 

Arafel watches Kate from the dark. Enjoys it. Enjoys every second of her trepidation, can’t help but grin when Kate inevitably goes directly to a bar. “There you go, honey… saved”, she whispers to herself. She will make her wait.

“Is that her?”, drawls a silky voice next to her.

Arafel nods. “Mhm. Do you approve?” 

“I never approve.” He puts his chin on her shoulder, over-emphasizing every word, dramatically. She tangles her hand into his long hair, then finger combs it back out to silky perfection. He puts a small plastic bag into her other hand then wraps his arms around her shoulders. She turns her head to meet his lips for a quick kiss. 

“Call if you need me.” With that, he melts into the crowd.

Arafel makes her way towards Kate. She approaches her so that Kate does not see her until she is standing immediately behind her and the bartender is handing her a glass of wine, white. Kate mumbles a clumsy but honest, “When did you get here? I didn’t see you…” and Arafel almost smiles. But Kate instantly switches into the customary and biting, “Punctuality is your best feature then?” Arafel darkens in response, “They say my legs are”. 

They glare at each other for long minutes and Kate thinks it was a mistake coming at all. Arafel, on the other hand, sensing the internal struggle within Kate, is amused. Finally, Kate relents, “Look, I did not come here to fight.”

“You look nice” rolls off Arafel’s tongue like diamonds as she takes a strand of Kate’s hair to twirl it around her finger. Kate is bedazzled. Apparently grace rolls off this one just as easily as venom. She tries to remember that it’s likely that every time Arafel breathes she speaks a lie, but under the probing gaze of those non-human eyes, it’s difficult. 

“Why did you invite me here?”, Kate can’t help being Kate, wanting to know the rules of engagement. 

Arafel doesn’t do rules. “Every time I breathe I speak a lie”, she repeats Kate’s very thoughts freezing her in her seat. She is still playing with her hair and smiling at her, but now Kate could swear that there is infinite sadness in that smile, older than time. She wonders, not for the first time, if there is more to this woman than one can see, and she waits for her to continue, but Arafel snaps out of her thoughts and picks up her purse.

“I’m going to go powder my nose. Be right back.” 

“You mean powder up your nose”, Kate’s words are mocking, meant to insult, a gut reaction to being shut out. 

But if the words hit their intended mark, Arafel doesn’t show it. She laughs a lighthearted laugh, “To each their poison, darling”, clicks her wine glass, barely touched, against Kate’s vodka, almost finished, “You need a refill”, and sashays in the direction of the bathroom like a runway model, like she was born to walk in six inch heels, skin-tight black lace mini dress, long sleeves and high collar but back open the entire length of her spine, and black sheer stockings with the obligatory stripe running down the center of the back of her legs accentuating their length. Kate watches other eyes trailing her, no undressing her, eye-fucking her, stray hands on her hips, legs, ass as she passes through the crowd. Watches Arafel loving every second of it. “God, what a junkie slut”, Kate mutters under her breath, drains her glass and orders a refill. 

When she’s some three quarters through the next one, alcohol humming pleasantly through her limbs, her blue eyes become less hard, her mouth relaxing into a semblance of a smile. She decides the place is not half bad, the music, a strange mix of 80’s punk, goth, psychedelic trance, futuristic beats, death metal, straight up metal, touches of rock’n’roll and stuff too eccentric to be categorized, she begins to even like it. When the bartender Arafel seemed to know comes close again, she asks if Arafel came here a lot. He gives a vague “some” for an answer. When she follows this up by asking whether she comes alone, he becomes even cagier, says that she sometimes comes alone, sometimes with friends and sometimes with her brother. Brother? She had no idea Arafel had a brother. Or friends. She wonders at the nature of these friendships, but knows she will not learn of them from the barkeep. 

By the time Arafel returns Kate is half way through her fourth drink and tapping her fingers to “Personal Jesus”. Arafel laughs, “Having fun?” She grabs Kate’s glass in one hand, Kate’s hand in the other and tosses over her shoulder, “Come dance with me”, as she’s dragging her to the crowded dance floor. 

Kate is not nearly drunk enough for this. When Arafel hands her her drink, she gulps it down and is still standing stiffly amidst the crowd vibrating all around her. Arafel on the other hand is one with the pulsing heartbeat of the bodies, but her eyes are fixed on Kate. 

Then as if by magic four shots are handed to Arafel. She gives the heavily made up girl who brought them a kiss on the cheek and hands two to Kate. “Cheers, darling!” Kate downs what turns out to be straight Stoli gratefully. 

Kate points at the empty glasses with a question mark. Arafel shrugs, mouths, “I have friends” and hands her the last of the four shots, which Kate contemplates refusing for the sake of politeness, and pretense, then forgets propriety and does what she wants instead draining it. Arafel takes the glasses from her hands and hands them off to somebody in the crowd. Then, closing her eyes, she puts on a show, for Kate and anyone watching, making love to the music, her movements sensual without being vulgar, tantalizing, seductive, she is everyone’s wet dream but she’s untouchable. Kate is hypnotized, her hips now swaying in rhythm. She just watches Arafel for the span of nearly five songs increasingly aware of wanting her, wanting to possess her, ravage her body, before she runs her hands up and down over her ribs, over her hips. At first Arafel doesn’t react… then she places her hands over Kate’s and presses down making the strokes firmer and guiding their joined hands over her breasts and abdomen. Kate needs no further encouragement as she slips her hands between Arafel’s thighs. Arafel lets Kate’s hands roam keeping her eyes closed. 

Then she feels a different and familiar set of hands settle on her hips, run up her sides and outstretched arms before his familiar form presses against her back. She doesn’t have to see him, she knows who it is. He brings her arms down by her wrists, and slides her palms over her own hips then onto his. She grabs onto his hipbones pulling him closer, tilts her head back leaning fully into him, her head on his shoulder. Kate’s hands are needy, pulling her towards her, but Kate will wait. Arafel will never deny this mouth now claiming hers in a deep possessive kiss, his hand on her neck, his long white/silver hair forming a curtain around them. When their lips part, they are both smiling, looking into each other’s eyes, both sets of pupils huge and black as night, enclosed in the privacy of his hair. 

They grind against each other to the rhythm of the music, his lips brushing against her ear, “I could fuck you right now, spoil you for her…” he hisses in her ear, the evidence that it’s not an empty threat palpable against her. Then he sinks his teeth low into her neck, right above the collar bone, drawing blood and bruising her, marking her as his. Arafel digs her nails into the flesh immediately above his hipbones piercing skin. He bites deeper, swallows blood; it will be a savage bruise. Arafel clenches her teeth to keep from making a sound. “… But this will do, for now. Have fun, I’ll see you in the morning”, he says licking his lips. Arafel mouths, “Yes”, as she runs her hands between them and over his groin. He catches her hands in his, presses them more firmly against his arousal then removes them crushing her fingers painfully before they let go of each other. 

Kate looks more confused than anything. For all its passion, what she saw was a brief kiss, if it was a kiss at all, and a short conversation, which she could not hear, with a random intoxicated stranger. The curtain of hair and their bodies covered everything else. But now she spots the angry bruise on Arafel’s neck, tiny beads of blood drying on the surface. When she goes to reach for it, face aghast, Arafel slaps her hand away, grabs her by the lapels of her jacket and pushes her backwards through the crowd, which parts for them like the proverbial sea until Kate is pinned back against the nearest wall. Kate is vaguely surprised by Arafel’s strength. They stare into each others eyes for long minutes both trying to ascertain what the other’s intentions are. 

After all, there’s no love lost between them. Their relationship is one with a long history of intense dislike. Kate considers Arafel an excellent attorney but heartless and opportunistic, and also a cokehead and a slut. That’s what all the stories say. The coke part she now knows to be true, and the rest appears likely. Arafel, in return, thinks that Kate is a brainless corporate kiss-ass and therefore by definition a waste of air. Arafel’s judgment is swift, merciless, and final, but also, for the purposes of this encounter, inconsequential. 

“Do you want me?”, Arafel snarls, her body pressed against Kate’s, not having let go of her jacket. To her, this means nothing. The game is simple and devoid of agendas. It’s devoid of emotion also. Well aware of what Kate thinks of her, she doesn’t care. Call her a heartless junkie slut, she couldn’t cares less. One is true, the rest is not so simple. None will be a point of discussion with the likes of Kate, whose opinion is therefore irrelevant. And there is no reason Kate would be capable of understanding, or even imagining, or that should matter to her. 

“Yes…”, breathes Kate, grabbing the back of Arafel’s head and trying to pull her into a kiss. For all that you think I am, what does that make you, Arafel is silently amused. It’s a little more complicated for Kate. She has hated, despised and admired Arafel for over a decade, and the line between what she admires and what she abhors is a lot more blurry than Kate likes her lines. In this moment, she wants to both possess her and destroy her. 

Arafel knows this also, but this is exactly the line Arafel is comfortable walking. So close to the promise of annihilation that she can feel its icy touch, it feels like home. She resists the kiss, and smiles, speaking into Kate’s ear as she runs her tongue along the ridge, “Where is your car?”

“Valet”, Kate barks at her. 

“Let’s go”. And the two of them walk out, Kate following Arafel. When they come outside, Kate’s car is already waiting. Kate is incredulous, “How often do you do this?” Arafel laughs and doesn’t answer the question. 

Kate moves to get into the driver’s seat, but Arafel stops her by simply extending her hand across her abdomen in a universal gesture that means, “Your keys, please”. 

Kate bristles, and snarls at her, “Do you think I can’t drive?” Arafel’s replay is completely calm, and she appeases Kate with a broad smile, “I am certain you’re a professional, darling; however, _I_ know all of the traffic cops on the way to my house.” The smile vanishes as quickly as it appeared, “Keys. Please.” Kate drops the keys into her waiting hand, reluctantly and mumbling something under her breath, but she walks to the passenger door and gets in.


	2. I'll see you in the morning

Neither talks on the 20 minute drive. Kate has plenty to say. Arafel, however, blasts music at full volume. Because Arafel has no interest in anything Kate might say and no use for talking at the moment in general. In the elevator on the way up to the top floor, Kate tries again, but Arafel ignores her. She keeps ignoring her even when they are inside the apartment. 

Being treated like an annoying child lights a match to Kate’s alcohol-riddled blood. Arafel’s back is turned to her while she fumbles with something on the kitchen counter. Kate grabs her by the upper arm spinning her around to face her, “If you won’t talk to me, you _will_ look at me!”

Arafel turns around and looks up through lowered eyelashes directly into Kate’s eyes. In her hands, she holds Kate’s keys and the half-empty bag of coke from earlier. Without taking her eyes off Kate, she slowly opens the bag, uses Kate’s keys to scoop out a generous amount and just as slowly brings it to her nostril. Then, shutting the airflow to the other side off with one finger, inhales. 

Kate watches her, speechless. 

Arafel repeats the sequence five more times staring Kate down the entire time. If defiance had a name… Kate wants to look away, or slap the shit out of Arafel’s hands, but finds herself transfixed. More disturbingly, she is getting wet, images of Arafel on her knees rushing through her mind.

“You’re a fucking waste.” 

“Am I?” Arafel’s lips twist in a wolfish half-grin. “What are you still doing here then?” She licks the key clean. 

Kate grabs her by the neck with one hand, “Shut up, just shut up”, her mouth millimeters from Arafel’s. 

Arafel bites her lip, hard, drawing blood. 

“Bitch!”, Kate snarls, backhanding Arafel across the mouth. But she lets go of her, snapping out of it, thinking she’d gone too far.

Arafel, however, only licks her lip and laughs. “If you’re going to hit me, at least take me to bed first.” And she walks in the direction of the bedroom. Kate, after a two second pause, follows. 

She finds Arafel standing at the foot of a wrought iron canopied bed, the canopy strung with tiny fairy lights. Sheer black and silver curtains hang from the canopy railing and are gently blowing in the breeze coming from the open window. Black silk sheets. The bedroom is spacious, but other than a standing full-length mirror, there is no other furniture. Instead, there are plants of all sizes and shapes, everywhere. Arafel is facing the bed, her back to Kate, not looking at her.

Kate is momentarily disoriented. The lights seem to twinkle like real stars and reflect of the waxy leaves casting strange and moving shadows. Arafel herself seems to move yet stand still. Kate feels lightheaded. Then Arafel’s voice cuts through, as if coming from a great distance, in echoes at first, then returning to normal, “Are you going to stand there all night?” The room becomes just a room, albeit a strange one, again and Kate’s head stops spinning. But she is left with a strange and irrational taste in the back of her throat of just having been the victim of a deliberate and malicious illusion, meant to intimidate and warn. When Arafel looks at her sideways under lowered eyelashes, she is certain. Tomorrow, she won’t be certain of anything. But right now she is furious. 

She crosses the space between herself and Arafel in three long, determined strides, grabs Arafel by the wrists, places her hands on the bed posts, which Arafel grabs onto to keep standing since Kate is also spreading her legs using her foot. Then she tears her dress completely off in a single motion. Arafel momentarily mourns the dress; that one she liked very much, but is otherwise pleased by Kate’s reaction. 

Arafel is left standing in stockings and heels, her body forming a star. Kate takes a step back and a moment to admire the site before her, which gives her the opportunity to notice scars, shimmering paler on pale, crossing Arafel’s back. Not many, but enough to scream a story. She approaches and runs her finger along them, realization dawning. “Dear god, you are going to be my worst mistake” is the last truly coherent thought passing through Kate’s mind that night. 

She slides her palms over Arafel’s back, then onto her hips, then over her pelvic bone. Arafel is quiet but she’s breathing harder. Kate slides her hands between her legs, Arafel responds by spreading her legs a little further and presses herself against Kate’s hands. Feeling how wet Arafel is makes Kate more so, but she takes her hands away and stands some distance behind Arafel again. Arafel shivers, but doesn’t make a sound.

“If you do not want me to hurt you tonight, you better tell me to leave now”, Kate’s voice is a tortured whisper.

Kate can’t see Arafel’s wicked grin, as she replays, “I will only tell you that you might find the nightstand to the right interesting”. 

Kate is no longer surprised by anything, although the contents of the nightstand to the right are impressive even to somebody with years of experience. But Kate selects a cat o’ nine tails and closes the door. Simple is what she will need tonight. 

She takes her jacket off but leaves the rest of her clothing on, then returns to Arafel who hasn’t moved from her position although she followed Kate’s every movement. Kate runs the leather tails over Arafel’s breasts, bites her ear then asks “Do you need to be tied down? Or will you be still?”

“No.”

“No what?”

“I don’t need to be tied down.”

“Mistress”, Kate pushes, and enters her suddenly with three fingers as deeply as can.

Arafel stiffens in surprise, but the word “Mistress” does not cross her mouth. Nor will it. Ever. Kate can keep dreaming. Others have tried. Kate doesn’t appreciate the snub and withdraws her fingers. Arafel wonders if the emptiness feels better or worse when her thoughts are interrupted by the lash of the cat o’ nine across her back. And it’s savage. Arafel’s impressed. Not many men have the strength for such a blow. 

And Kate shows no intention of stopping. Arafel focuses on the delicate balance between retaining control to remain still and giving herself over to pleasure. Because, yes, for her pain is pleasure and pleasure is pain. When she feels the leather cut through skin, her body is screaming for more. 

But blood running down Arafel’s back stops Kate. “Have you had enough?”, her voice is all honey in Arafel’s ear, but her fingers speak a different language as she penetrates Arafel again. 

“No”, Arafel is honest. Kate fucks her harder, pressing her body back against her own. When Arafel gets the idea and has to lean back against Kate anyway to remain standing, Kate re-employs the cat o’ nine again, this time to strike Arafel’s breasts and abdomen. The lashes are much lighter, but Arafel’s every nerve is on edge, and the desired effect is there. She has to grit her teeth to keep from crying out when she reaches orgasm contracting around Kate’s fingers. 

Kate is pleased to see the Ice Queen show some indication of feeling anything at all, although it’s far less than she would prefer. But she has other things on her mind and she can’t wait. She pushes Arafel forward off of her, and is frankly amazed that the girl stands without faltering. 

“Turn around”, she orders. Arafel obeys. “Get on your knees.” Arafel does. Kate approaches her, cat o’ nine still in her hand, “I assume you know what to do. And if I am not satisfied…”, her eyes fall on the cat o’ nine. 

Arafel knows what to do, although she’s none to pleased about it. This is the part she dislikes, but now and then she makes concessions. She is not afraid of further pain, quite the contrary. But she is more interested in another kind of victory. So she gets to work unzipping Kate’s trousers, sliding them off her hips, letting them fall to her feet, smiles to herself at the boxer briefs underneath, “Seriously, how typical”. But the woman’s physique is impressive, that stands. 

Arafel begins by licking the outside of Kate’s lips, long and slow using the full surface of her tongue, swallowing everything, her eyes watching Kate who is staring back at her mesmerized. Arafel has never looked more like a panther, and the cat is very good at this. When she slips her tongue inside her, Kate moans. And continues moaning as that tongue continues alternating between fucking her and exerting firm pressure against her clitoris. She grabs onto Arafel’s head for balance. Arafel grips the back of her legs when she knows the counselor is approaching climax. It could come faster, but she knows better than to use her fingers with women like Kate. Finally, she simply keeps her tongue stiff and lets Kate guide her head in rhythm with her hips until Kate’s groan and firm pressure of her hands on her head tell her the obvious. 

When the shudders stop, Kate shoves her away from her. Arafel’s back hits the bed frame and it hurts like hell, but she is smiling, wiping her mouth with a sheet corner. Thoroughly entertained.

Kate glares at her. 

“Oh, but you look so good with pants around your knees”, Arafel says feigning apology. 

“It makes sense that your sheets are black”, Kate’s tone is threatening, “You are easy to beat.” She is pulling her trousers back up and zipping them up, advancing on Arafel, and looms over her, her hand raised. 

Arafel, still on the floor, looks up at her, “Really? Was I that bad?” There is no fear in her words. There is no discernable emotion at all. Only sarcasm. 

“No”, says Kate, “You look good on your knees.” 

Kate expects a smart-ass counter-remark. But Arafel, sick of pointless banter, vaguely unsatisfied, as always, but also honestly tired, just smiles, stretches, gets up, and without further ado announces that she is going to sleep. With that she kicks off her shoes, slides off her stockings and crawls under the sheets, adding, “You can let yourself out”. Kate is left standing in the middle of the room, dismissed once again, and thinking “And you can go fuck yourself”. Her head has cleared some and she is not driving home points over the legal limit in the middle of the night. But Arafel seems to be already asleep. So Kate gets on top of the covers on the other side of the bed and is asleep almost instantly. 

Arafel wakes up at 10:00 am, hours too early. Today is the one day in the week she could sleep or at least lounge in bed between sleep and waking till evening and she always does. She hates it when people don’t have the good manners to vanish into thin air, or at least out of her apartment before she notices they are there. It’s beyond irritating. She’s not used to sharing her bed except with one other and that’s entirely different. The heat and occasional touch of Kate’s body, the very knowing that she’s there brings her out of sleep hour upon the hour until she is finally and definitively awake. And then there’s the aftermath to contend with. Is she sorry? She’s never sorry. Kate’s a part of the procession of irrelevance which moves through these sheets, their faces soon forgotten, their names rarely known. She just doesn’t want to deal with anyone in the morning. What will this one want? A fucking cup of coffee? A conversation? There’s not enough drugs in the world to endure that. She slitters out of bed soundlessly, mind bent on plan B – avoidance, for as long as possible. 

She’s in the bathroom, wrapped in her robe, contemplating her reflection through white lines on the mirror, trying to distinguish want from pure opportunity, settles on opportunity and puts the last of the coke away for later, when she hears a key turn in the lock and the front door open. Bitch, you really should have left when I told you to, she thinks. Not that she’s particularly concerned. It won’t be her world going topsy-turvy. 

She proceeds towards the living room. Her brother is sitting on the sofa, his back to her. His long hair, so pale that it’s almost white, the same as her own, hanging down his back and over his shoulders as he is bending over the coffee table. He hears her of course, pipes an overly cheery, “Good morning sis, didn’t think you’d be up”, not turning from whatever he’s doing, which, on any given morning, is more likely one thing than any other. 

“There’s nothing good about this morning”, Arafel observes, falling onto the sofa next to him. She gathers his hair and ties it into a lose knot at the nape of his neck then leans her head on his shoulder. She’s the only one he allows to touch his hair like this, especially when he’s fucked-up like he obviously still is now, she can tell by the tone of his voice. 

“Was she that tragic?” He doesn’t wait for an answer as a line of white powder disappears up each nostril in rapid succession. “Here, to fix being awake on a Saturday morning.” He hands her the straw. “She has a firm hand, and anger enough to use it. You’ll like her. The tragic part is that she’s still here”, Arafel replies, then turns her attention to the matter at hand. 

“K?” He nods. She smiles, “You’re a savior”. There are four lines left on his mirror. She does two. He finishes the rest. 

She leans her head on the back of the couch, a smile playing on her lips, waiting for oblivion. Her brother laughs looking at her. He licks his fingertips, dips them into the powder dust left on the mirror, licks one clean and places the other against her lips. Arafel licks then sucks the fingertip into her mouth. He pulls it out. “More”, she purrs. He gathers up the remaining dust and divides it between them in the same way. This time, when she sucks on his finger, he adds a second and does not pull them out. Their eyes lock, and then he’s on top of her, straddling her lap. Only then do his fingers leave her mouth. Their lips find each other’s in an instant, and they kiss slow and hard, their tongues deep within each other, biting each other’s tongues, lips, drawing blood and relishing the taste, leaving bruises, not breathing, their hands in each other’s hair and stroking the sharp angular outlines of each other’s faces. It’s the drugs still coursing through them from last night and it isn’t. They are each other’s strongest addiction. 

When they break apart, they are looking into each other’s eyes, forehead pressed to forehead, their hands clutching each other’s jaw line so hard their knuckles are turning white, their breathing slowing now, heartbeats turning shallow and uneven. They are aware that they are not alone and they don’t care. This moment is theirs and theirs alone. The world can wait. 

Kate woke to the sound of laughter, and finding the bed empty made her way to the living room. And stood there, appalled, but unable to turn away, watching the woman she shared something, in her opinion, quite intense with only several hours ago kissing this guy, whom she now recognizes from the club, like it’s the last day on Earth. 

Brother and sister share another brief touch of lips breaking the contact simultaneously. They stand up slowly, hand in hand, through the blissful ketamine-induced haze descending upon them. They walk to the large empty space between the open living room and the kitchen and face Kate. 

Arafel speaks in monotone, like she’s saying Good Morning to the security guard downstairs, or ordering coffee, “This is my brother Thranduil”.

Thranduil. The brother. The brother whom she allows to claim her mouth like she most certainly did not allow her. The brother who is holding her to him as only a lover would, inclining his head ever so slightly in an inquisitive gesture as his unfocused eyes scan over Kate, his question directed to his sister and laced with so much arrogant disinterest that it obliterates its purpose, as it obliterates Kate’s very being, “And this is?” He asks as if he has no idea, as if Arafel had never mentioned the woman, not in all the years of standing against her in various courtrooms, and not last night. Arafel is almost amazed at the perfection of the act, almost, but she knows him too well. Even half asleep, Thranduil is always the most dangerous snake in the room. 

“Someone who doesn’t know when to leave”, she leans against her brother’s chest as he wraps his arms tighter around her shoulders, feeling her begin to shiver as her body temperature drops, and kisses her neck. Two pairs of wolf-like green-yellow eyes holding Kate’s infuriated gaze, daring her to challenge them, daring her to put words to anything she’s thinking or feeling and speak them out loud. 

Kate feels hate. And hurt. And disgust. But she can’t help but look at them like this for a minute longer. Individually, they are striking. Together, they are impossible to ignore. They are near copies of each other, but not identical, and the differences accentuate each other’s features. She is smaller then he is, a little more delicate, although both exude an aura of androgyny, and, Kate is surprised, even now, of dignity. Both have long, narrow, triangular faces with prominent cheekbones. Both are willowy, tall and almost painfully thin, all collarbones, ribs and hipbones. Yet, they exude power, not fragility. When they move, they move like cats. He is older than her, but not by much. She realizes she has no idea how old Arafel actually is. She must be at least 40, but she looks 25. Similarly, she can’t guess Thranduil’s age. They are fair of complexion, with flawless skin. How they manage that, considering their lifestyle, Kate has no idea. Their hair is almost white and shimmers silver. While his is long, below his shoulders, she keeps hers super short. She doesn’t wear any make up; he is apparently a fan of heavily made up eyes. There is something strangely attractive in the inversion. And then there are those yellow-green, non-human eyes, to pull you in and trap you like a mouse. In that they are identical. Kate breaks out of her reverie. Cold, calculated, arrogant assholes. In that they are also the same. And crazy, with every passing hour she learns just how much. The lawyer in her screams to get out of there. They’re falling asleep standing up, their eyes unfocused, pupils huge, an OD waiting to happen. The woman in her needs to not see them kiss, or touch, or be…. Because it’s like nothing she’s shared in years and may never know again, because it looks like love. Sick fucks. 

So she rattles of a hurried, “Pleased to meet you”, which they both know she does not mean, grabs her wallet, her keys and lets herself out the door. Her throat is so dry she barely croaks the words, and her head is pounding. She’d kill for a glass of water, to down some painkillers and quench the thirst, but that would require three more minutes in the kitchen, three more minutes in the presence of _that_. What the fuck is _that_? She wonders for the second time in 24 hours. How deep does the rabbit hole that is Arafel go? 

There’s fucked up, then there’s Fucked Up. And to not even try to deny it? Like all attorneys, like herself, even high as a kite Arafel can produce a perfectly believable lie within the space of a second. She could have said anything. A friend. A lover. Anything. Anyone. Was she trying to shock her? Did they stage the whole thing? But no. That was no act. She simply told her the truth, and refused to apologize for its existence. And Kate, to her horror, realizes that she is furious because she is jealous. Which makes her angrier. Who the fuck does Arafel think she is that she can do whatever the fuck she wants whenever the fuck she wants with whomever the fuck she wants?

When Kate leaves, Thranduil kisses his sister’s forehead, “Ok?”

“Mhm”, Arafel unwraps herself from his arms and takes his hand, “Come on, lets go to bed.” Thranduil, tired to the bone, follows her gratefully. 

Once in the bedroom, Arafel goes to close the heavy curtains against the daylight. When she turns around Thranduil is already under the sheets, his clothing discarded by the side of the bed. She quickly joins him, dropping her robe on the floor. 

“Let me see”, he has already discerned that: 1) no sex had been had in the actual bed, and 2) the sheets are covered in Arafel’s blood, now all over his skin, not that he minds. Arafel turns around to let him see her back.

“A heavy hand, indeed…”, Thranduil mutters mostly to himself, pulling her into his arms, pressing the entire length of her body against his. Arafel melts into him, completely relaxed, her eyes closing. The one person she can sleep near is her brother. “I don’t want you to see her again without me. I don’t want any more scars on you.” His voice is a whisper and he is caressing her cheek as he speaks, but the words are both a demand and a desperate plea. She turns around to face him, kisses his throat, she will not go against it. 

“Tell me what you did last night”, Arafel draws out her words, her voice drugged, sleepy. 

“What I always do.”

“Does he have a name?”

“I imagine he does. I didn’t ask.” He drapes one leg over her hip and pulls her closer to him, until their hips touch. She can feel that he is beginning to get hard. It makes her body respond even through the encroaching oblivion. “He left me unsatisfied.”

Of course he did, Arafel thinks. They all do. It’s the same for her. 

His hands are on the small of her back. Hers, bent at the elbows, on his shoulder blades, their hips joined together and rocking lazily against each other. Arafel’s face is buried in his collarbone, his chin on top of her head. And they talk. They talk about random things they forgot to tell each other during the past several days, important, unimportant, nonsense. Between words, they rain short, soft kisses upon each other’s clammy skin, where they can reach it, neck, shoulders, collarbones. She shifts just enough for her increasingly wet slit to slide against his growing arousal. Sometimes they stay like this for hours. Sometimes it is enough. 

Today it isn't. Thranduil flips them so that Arafel is on her back and enters her in one fluid movement, letting out a long sigh. She moans. No one else gets to hear them like this, uncensored. Or see them totally unhinged and uninhibited. His arms are under her back holding her up towards him, his body covering hers fully. She wraps her legs around his. The only visible movement of the two intertwined bodies is that of their hips thrusting against each other in unison, the movements slow but deep. It’s not a quick or intense climax for either of them; their bodies are much too wrecked for that. And when Thranduil eventually spills inside her, they are half there and half gone into another world, drifting off into oblivion with the descending edge of the climax, but still joined, and holding onto each other like to the last remaining light.


	3. Scars (Talk is cheep)

Thranduil wakes tangled up with his sister, both of them laying on their sides facing each other, torsos and hips touching, legs intertwined, arms around each other, heads stacked on top of each other. 

He is grateful for dreamless sleep and breathes in deeply, relieved. Then the smell of blood hits him, and with it panic. In the half-light of the early twilight barely illuminating the room through the heavy curtains, he sees the thin coating of dried blood all over Arafel, all over him, he looks at his hands and sees that they are completely covered in blood. Millennia of blood fuse into a single horror. He doesn’t know where or when they are. Terror threatens to swallow him. He untangles himself from still sleeping Arafel, sitting up against the headboard. As he moves her to lay her in his lap, to check how hurt she is, he sees her back, and his mind, now shaking of the veil of sleep, begins to center into the present reality. He remembers where the blood on the sheets came from. He also realizes that he must have dug his fingers into the fresh cuts on her back this morning, thus all the blood on his hands. It must have hurt. She didn’t say a word. Of course not. Neither of them ever would. And realizing there’s no actual danger, Thranduil calms down, his racing heart returning to normal, but he can’t help his thoughts drifting into the far, far away past. He pulls Arafel closer to him. 

Once upon a time, there was an elven Prince and Princess. Their names were Thranduil and Arafel. Oropher, King of the Greenwood, was their father. By the time they became the royal family of the Woodland Realm, they had lived through thousands of years of slaughter of the immortal race of elves in numbers uncounted. They witnessed slaughter by enemy, by betrayal, by greed, by powers of forces dark and darker. Oropher became paranoid and distrustful, and as a result cold, secretive, cunning and above all dangerously unpredictable. His two children, especially after their mother’s death and Thranduil’s near death by dragon fire, the scars of which he bore for the remainder of his life, became much the same, if not more so. 

Oropher was obsessed with securing the succession line for his newly forged kingdom, but would not suffer an outsider near the throne of Greenwood. So, as the family prepared to take over the rule of Greenwood, he devised a plan in which Thranduil and Arafel would be presented as the Prince and his soon to be wife. Brother and sister were happy to oblige. They didn’t cling to each other for dear life then, that came later, but they did dread the day Oropher would marry them off to strangers in order to strengthen the kingdom’s position and power. They knew it would come and soon. It was the inevitable fate of every ruler’s child. It would seal them in misery for eternity. This unexpected arrangement delighted them both for various reasons. First, they were close and very much alike. Come what may, they were sure they could endure it together. Second, although they had already shared a bed on several occasions and enjoyed it, both had other interests, which ran contrary to production of hairs to the throne. Neither would interfere with the other’s pursuit of these interests. Their relationship was unusual, but it suited them perfectly. Perhaps their father, despite his lack of show of affection for his children, even knew. What talk spread of their being brother and sister over the subsequent centuries were never denied, but was never confirmed either. As such, it quickly died, especially with Greenwood’s isolation and with the birth of their son, Legolas, the pride and promise of the young kingdom after the heavy losses, including that of Oropher himself, it suffered during the War of the Last Alliance. Beside, in time, such things became common practice among elf and men alike, intent on preserving the purity of certain bloodlines, before Christian morality declared it taboo, in no small part in its relentless and bloody persecution of those bloodlines. 

Thranduil and his Queen were considered eccentric and quick to anger at best, merciless and cruel at worst by outsiders, but under their rule, the kingdom more than endured, it prospered even under the ever-present shadow from the South and the East and without a Ring of Power to stay the decay of time. Their people loved them and trusted them, even as they knew the King’s wrath was the price of making mistakes. But a kingdom like theirs could not afford mistakes. Neither Thranduil nor Arafel are certain that they understand the feeling of happiness, but they think they might have known something akin to it then. 

As the Darkness spread, fewer and fewer outsiders came to the Greenwood and people began referring to it as Mirkwood, in whispers, out of the King’s earshot at first, then openly. Gandalf, the Wandering Wizard, still came. Mostly he came badgering Thranduil about the necessity of destroying the Necromancer. Thranduil agreed in principle. In actuality, he didn’t relish the idea of sending his people to certain death. But Arafel had had enough of it. Enough of the Wizard, enough of the poison seeping from Dol Guldur, enough of dead elves, enough of Thranduil’s sleepless nights and increasingly bad moods. She had inherited some of their mother’s magic. She told Thranduil that she would lead a group of elves similarly skilled and some of their best warriors, take down the Necromancer and be done with it. He said, no. She would not disobey a direct order of the King, she would never undermine his authority publicly, but in the privacy of their chambers, they fought viciously for weeks. Their people didn’t see them much during those weeks. His handprint around her neck and his black eye were concealed by glamor and illusion for a formal dinner. He locked her up in a cell in the dungeons for a month causing even his closest advisors to wonder at his sanity. Finally, after a large party of their warriors was killed, and their son nearly so, he let her out. And he agreed that Dol Guldur had to be dealt with. He would go himself. Neither she nor his advisors would hear of it. He was the King. This was a suicide mission and everybody knew it, the King’s life could not be forfeit. Arafel was the Captain of the Guard. He let her go. He never forgave himself. She never forgave herself for making him. 

As far as anyobody knew, Thranduil lost his wife that day. There is no grave, no memory. But, Thranduil knows a different story. 

When Arafel failed to return for a day, then two, then three, when search parties he sent out came back with nothing, Thranduil went searching himself. He left in disguise in the middle of the night without telling a soul, knowing perfectly well that he would find them all dead. And so he did, elven bodies scattered at the bottom of that accursed hill, vacant, their souls long passed from this world. 

When he found Arafel, he picked her up and with singular purpose climbed the stairs to the crumbling fortress. He remembers it like it was last night. He will feel the supernatural cold in his bones like he feels the dragon fire on his face, arm and shoulder, forever. Some scars run too deep. 

He remembers the raspy echo of a voice, “Elvenking, you have no dominion here.”

He remembers saying, “Give her back to me”, and the Necromancer laughing, his laughter emptying Thranduil of the very will to live.

“Elvenking, you do not know what you ask for.”

He said that he didn’t care, that he would do anything. The laughter came again. Images then, of all the things he had already lost, and of all the things he would yet lose. He fell to his knees, Arafel still in his arms. Then a newborn baby boy, a living breathing elfling. Tears ran down his face and froze on his cheeks. 

“It’s your son, Elvenking. She hadn’t told you yet. You can take him home. I can give you that. Unlike your other son, he will not learn to hate you. Or… “

Or…

“Or… You will swear not to come after me ever again. And you will forfeit the child. You can have your sister back under those conditions. But she will not be the same. Those who are once dead do not belong with the living. It will go ill for you, Elvenking.”

He remembers every word. How Arafel had cursed him for it, cursed herself trice over. How he would do it all again, a thousand times again. “I swear. Give her back to me. I do not care.”

“You are a fool, Elvenking.”

The echoing laughter. The child dissolving into the frozen air. The wind that seemed to howl for days, but it must have been only minutes. He fought against the hollow blackness entering him. He lost consciousness. When he came to, Arafel was kneeling next to him stroking his frozen face with an equally cold hand. 

And she was not the same. In her mind, in her manners, she was fully Arafel. But all passion was gone from her. Neither of them was ever overly emotional, but now Arafel felt nothing. She did not only lose the ability to feel, she did not even understand feeling or the point of it. Anger, hate, love, joy, sorrow… none of it registered. Death also marked her with a physical imprint so that half of her face appeared as something like her own skeletal skull. This would have been easy enough to conceal through illusion, and she did so in the beginning, but as centuries passed, she stopped caring and came to like the honesty of it. Also, even the little bit of light that reached the forest floor during daylight hours bothered her; she was confined to shadow. Being a capable hunter and a trained warrior in combination with lack of emotions gave her a unique advantage. She could not and would not go home, but she could live in the vast forest and she became more lethal than ever to her enemies. 

As for Thranduil, all he wanted was to leave his crown behind and join her. After the initial shock, he found it so easy to let the ice cover over his heart and simply be. He found freedom. But he couldn’t let go. He had responsibilities. He had a still young and fragile kingdom to rule; it depended on him for its wellbeing. And he had a son, a son who would grow up to hate him, he believed that, but a son whom he nevertheless loved. 

So, after some weeks, Thranduil came back home, and he said he found the dead party but not his wife, and for the next two thousand years, strapped and stretched on his Catherine wheel until his bones broke and beyond, he kept his mouth shut, swallowed bile, and he tried to be a King, a father, and a brother. 

They said there was no love in him. They said he didn’t care. They said he was a terrible father. They said he loved his wife too much. They said he killed her. They said he held the lives of his people in too high a regard. They said he sold them for cheep gold. 

Arafel whispers, “Talk is cheep”. Thranduil is startled out of his thoughts, wondering if she is awake, but when he looks, she is still deep in sleep. He smiles, squeezes her hand, which he just now realizes he’s been holding the entire time. She might be in his head, swimming through the labyrinth of his mind subconsciously, which she has always done easily. Let her, he thinks, as his mind drifts back. Let her… Thranduil sings barely audibly…

_Kneeling to the Northern Lights_  
_Kneeling to the frozen lights_  
_And I cried but no one could hear_  
_I cried 'cause you were doomed_  
_And I’ll wait for you_  
_It’s cold in here_  
_There's no one left_  
_And I’ll wait for you_  
_And I’ll wait staring at the Northern Star_  
_I’m afraid it won’t lead me anywhere_  
_Our misery runs wild and free_  
_And nothing stops it from happening_  
_Feel our hearts, they’re cold as ice_

His version of words to a song he once heard. It reminded him of them. 

Arafel became one of the Shadow Elfs, loners who roamed the world, although she did spend most of her time in Mirkwood helping Thranduil where she could while carefully avoiding his soldiers, including their son, but never the King himself. 

During this time, brother and sister developed a new kind of bond, which, because it was independent of whims of emotion turned out to be utterly unbreakable. Arafel’s lack of emotion crawled under Thranduil’s skin and settled there like the thing that was made for him. For the first time, they were not afraid of hurting each other. Consequently, they were able to be completely honest with each other. They dropped all layers of pretense, last remnants of propriety and expectations, and conventional ideas of their people. They stood before each other naked, with every scar and raw nerve exposed. 

Thranduil stopped hiding his left side, mangled long ago by the dragon, in front of her. She ran her fingers over the scars, kissed him, told him he was beautiful, and meant every word. When she showed him her true face, he put his right, whole cheek to her right skeletal one, so he could feel the texture. He felt bone, sharp and cold against his soft and warm skin and loved it. Nothing had ever felt more real. He rubbed his cheek against hers with increasing pressure, as if in a trance. As she brought her hands into his hair, he put his hand to the other side of her face, the whole side, held her jawline, lowered his head and bit into her neck so hard he drew blood. It was the first time. She gasped, but only pressed his head to her neck. He bit deeper, drank, completely lost. They tore off each other’s clothing. He took her savagely against the forest floor slamming into her with wild abandon, knowing he was hurting her, knowing she welcomed it. She dug her nails into his back leaving gashes and felt his gratitude. When they climaxed, they were both screaming into the night and shaking entangled long after he had filled her. It was during that time that their lovemaking took on these frantic and often violent edges, the echoes of which it would retain through the coming millennia. The things love stopped them from doing to each other, this lack of acute emotion allowed. And nothing else would ever suffice. 

They ripped through each other’s minds like they tore into each other’s bodies. And they grabbed onto each other like a drowning man does onto a lifeboat. They were too much alike. They were each other’s reflection. In the essence of each other, they found the same courage, the same stubbornness, and power, and loyalty, but also the same shards of cold, calculated ruthlessness and indifference. They were each other’s salvation and each other’s ruin. They would never let go. They would never let anyone in either. Thranduil also used Arafel as an impartial and merciless judge to his decisions as the King of Mirkwood. More than anybody could know, Thranduil was acutely aware of motivation, the right and the wrong behind all of his actions. 

Arafel saves Thranduil from flipping through that loaded roller deck by trashing and screaming his name. He instantly snaps out of the past, wraps his arms around her shoulders and pulls her up against his chest. Bringing his lips next to her ear, he starts talking to her, “Shhh…. I am right here… Just a dream… I am right here…”

Arafel calms within seconds, awake, brings her hands to her face, rubbing her eyes, her temples, holds her head in her hands, trying to shake the dream off, “I hate that fucking dream.” She hates waking up screaming like a little girl; she hates that it never ends. 

“Dragon.” Thranduil doesn’t have to ask. She’s dreamt the same nightmare, on repeat, for thousands of years, ever since the dragon came directly at Thranduil. They were so young then. And old already. Those were bloody centuries, elves grew up quickly. They were both on the battlefield that day. Arafel had seen the beast coming for him, and screamed his name while running towards him. Thranduil had his back turned; that scream was all the warning he got and all that saved his life. Arafel pulled him out of the way before the dragon could burn him to cinder with the second gust of fire. She let the one and only person she had ever loved, apart from her brother, burn, and never talked about it. Countless deaths later, Thranduil still shivers when he thinks about it. 

This is what Arafel dreams. Although sometimes there are variations. Sometimes she dreams of what came after, her brother waking screaming in intolerable pain before being drugged back into thin sleep, her brother realizing he was permanently blind in one eye. Alternative dreams are of other deaths. Thranduil’s are the same. All their dreams are nightmares. 

“Dragon”, she confirms dejectedly, and adds, “I am sorry for waking you”. The nightmares are a simple fact of their lives. If they sleep longer than the ketamine lasts, they will dream. 

“You didn’t. I’ve been awake.” He shows her his bloody hands. “Your back is worse than you know”. 

She stretches and turns around to face him, pulling him down so she can lay on top of him, gives him a quick kiss on the lips, and gets a smile in return. “I am fine. This mess we need to deal with, however, unless you want to sleep in it again”, she is gesturing at the sheets. 

“We need a maid.”

“They seem to have an irrational aversion to blood, remember?” Arafel replies. A maid would be excellent, they just can’t find one that doesn’t quit in a week. 

Realizing how late it is, she changes the subject, “What are you doing tonight?”

“You”, his voice drops an octave. His eyes narrow. His smile is playful and cruel. Hers quickly mirrors it.

“When does Skip get here?”

“Now, I hope. Do you have anything left?”

“Two lines.”

Thranduil groans. “That’ll just make us painfully conscious.” 

Arafel laughs. Although it’s true and probably objectively not funny. But, they don’t live objectively. 

“Ok, I’m going to run us a bath”, Arafel is getting up, adding, “Change the sheets”, as she leaves the room. She needs to get rid of the after-effects of that accursed dream. Her brother understands. It’s like jumping universes, it takes a minute to absorb the shock of the landing. 

Thranduil closes his eyes. He feels lifeless. His head is pounding. He’s nauseous. He feels like his limbs are made of stone. He feels 10,000 years old. He doesn’t feel like changing the sheets. He wonders where Arafel still finds the will to get up every day. He needs to find out, soon. Maybe now. The doorbell interrupts him. Skip, finally. And Thranduil is saved, or doomed, by the proverbial bell. 

“You know I don’t like waiting”, his stone cold gaze drills through Skip when he opens the door.

“Yea man, apparently I’m early, Jesus, what the fuck, why can’t you put some clothes on? Shit.” The silver haired bastard’s pretty and all, thinks Skip, if you go that way, which fuck, who wouldn’t with this guy, but god damn, this is a business transaction. 

Thranduil, on the other hand, is instantly amused, even though he’s barely keeping himself from shaking and his vision blurs dangerously at the edges. “Why? Do you find me displeasing to look at?” He circles around Skip as he lets him in.

“Oh Jesus Christ, here’s your shit. Pay me and call me when you need more.”

Thranduil curls one side of his mouth in a wolf-like grin, narrows his eyes, “As much as I pay you, I should make you spend some time with me”. Skip visibly stiffens. “But I won’t”, Thranduil tosses his hair over his shoulder, turns around, digs in the pockets of his jacket, discarded over the back of a chair, and hands the money over. Skip notices his still bloody hands. There’s blood all over him, now that he’s looking, oh, god, he’s looking, no he’s not looking. Thranduil sees the half-horror in the other’s eyes. He had forgotten about the blood, but quickly recovers, “Don’t worry, it’s Arafel’s, and consensual.” The discomfort written all over Skip’s face almost makes him burst out in wild laughter, but he restrains himself and lets the dealer out the door almost politely. There’s no use in cutting the hand that feeds you. 

Arafel is standing at the door to the bathroom shaking her head, “You are insufferable, you know, one day he won’t come back.”

“Oh please, if I invited him to our bed, he would have accepted.”

“Don’t.”

“He’s not my type either. This, however…”, he shakes one of the newly acquired bags in front of her face as he makes his way into the bathroom, “… he is good for.” He pulls her along with him by wrapping an arm around her waist. 

They sit on the edge of the nearly full bathtub, which is made or pure white marble, as is the rest of the bathroom, including the floor. It is large, rectangular, and surrounded by a wooden bench. Like the bedroom, the bathroom is full of all manner of plants, in clusters, standing singular, hanging, some even on the bench itself their tendrils reaching into the water. Arafel is sitting in Thranduils lap. He is spreading the contents of the bag into neat lines on a mirror using a razorblade, quickly, efficiently, even though his hands are shaking. Half of it is gone in an instant up Thranduil’s nose. When Arafel raises an eyebrow in a question mark, he gestures towards the remaining lines, “Finish it. I am going to sow up your back. One of those cuts is very deep, it will scar.” 

“Right. And you don’t want any scars on me, except the ones you put there”, thinks Arafel trying not to laugh as she inhales the rest of the coke and puts the mirror, straw and empty bag away. 

They slip into the bathtub. Arafel tries not to wince as the hot water hits her back. Moments later, as Thranduil carefully sponges the dried blood off, the pain is already lessening. When he drops the sponge and uses his hands instead, Arafel rests her head on her arms, which are crossed over her bent knees and gives herself over to the pleasure of her brothers hands on her back, her shoulders, her hips… Thranduil began washing his sister’s back in an honest effort to clean the blood away. Now that his hands have meandered from her shoulders to her hips all he wants to do is grab onto those hips and take her on her hands and knees. He is completely erect as the image dances in his mind. He lets go of her. Later. He busies himself scrubbing blood off of him instead. Arafel, her entire body aching for his touch, does the same. 

When they are done, the water is crimson. Thranduil puts on his robe. Arafel’s is a bloody mess, so she uses a towel. Then she’s ordered to sit while he retrieves his surgical equipment. Both of them are quiet as he works. Thranduil is swallowing both anger he knows he has no right to and desire, which will have to wait. Arafel knows that saying anything right now could unleash wrath which would leave them at each other’s throats all night, then regretting every hour of it in the morning, so she says nothing. Also, he is not being kind, each stab of the needle uses more force than necessary, each pull of the suture is over-kill, revealing his frustrated desire. And with each stab and each pull, she is more and more aroused. 

When he is done and has poured clorohexadine all over her back, he walks away without a word. She could laugh, he is that predictable. Instead, she quickly fixes her hair, doesn’t even look at her back, and walks into the living room where she finds him finishing off another several lines. And he looks like murder. Irresistible. Arafel narrows her eyes to slits, walks straight up to him, grabs the back of his neck with one hand and brings his mouth to hers. Thranduil crushes his lips against hers, and pushes his tongue through her yielding lips deep into her mouth. When she bites his tongue, he grabs her other arm bending it painfully behind her back, but does not withdraw his tongue. The taste of his blood drives Arafel to near madness. When they pull apart to breathe, they stare into each other’s eyes, the air between them thick with need for each other. 

“Go get dressed, we’re going out”, Thranduil hisses between clenched teeth. 

Arafel looks at his groin noting the full erection there, then back into his eyes, “Yes, Sir.” She turns to go. As he lets go of her arm, he adds, “Wear the silver dress. And nothing else”. 

Arafel grins and sashays down the hallway giving him something to look at. She knows the nature of this game. Thranduil is high early, very early, and with no intention of coming down. He will be demanding, uncompromising, possessive, unlikely to care about even the minimum of social decorum, needy, aggressive, vicious and unpredictable. Not that she objects. 

She stops by the bathroom, collects the previously forgotten two lines and inhales them one after another on the way to her closet. It’s that kind of night. When high Arafel becomes even colder and more indifferent, with a devil-may-care attitude and an edge of cruelty. Together, brother and sister are dangerous, to themselves and to others. She takes time dressing, even though it’s unnecessary, she knows he’s doing the same. Thranduil, when it comes to perfecting his appearance, will not be rushed.

When they meet back in the living room, Arafel is in the skin-tight silver mini dress. The cut is simple. Sleeveless, it covers her back completely and closes close around her neck, but the material is exquisite, tiny chainmail, which sparkles silver. She wears black platform ankle booties, six inch heels and no jewelry. Thranduil has dried his hair and let it fall lose down his back, as usual. No make-up tonight. His shirt, if it could be called that, is made of identical material as Arafel’s dress but the links are larger and wider apart, his skin is clearly visible underneath. The cut is odd, tight, ¾ sleeves, deep V-neck and it reaches over his hips, but it fits him like second skin. He wears this over skin-tight leather trousers and black platform boots. His trousers are unzipped. 

Arafel notes this last detail. No underclothes. Interesting. Now what. Her entire body is buzzing. He’s on her within a second. In another, he has her bent over the end of the kitchen counter, her dress raised above her hips, his erection rubbing between her spread legs. He is talking near her ear, “I am not going to let you clean up before we go.” A shiver passes through Arafel’s body. She is already wet. 

He continues, “You’re going to go out with my seed running down your legs. Because you belong to me”. Arafel shivers again. She does. She always has. Still, rarely is he this obviously possessive. She loves it. She tries to turn her head towards him, but he stops her by biting into her neck and penetrates her at the same time, entering her all the way in one hard thrust. She can only gasp. Thranduil bites deeper so he doesn’t howl, relishing the familiar taste of his sister’s blood as he finally feels her closing around his painfully throbbing erection. He had waited as long as he could, subduing anger and want and even the pull of the drug, until they all came crashing into unbearable and fantastic need to be inside her. Now he doesn’t want to take it slowly. He can’t take it slowly. He needs to fuck her like an animal. Arafel, sensing this, places her hands on his hips and pulls him into her with every one of his own deep and hard thrusts, and Thranduil lets go of restraint completely. He takes her hands and places his over hers on the counter and not letting go of her neck, which he still holds in his teeth, pounds into her violently. Arafel’s hips slam into the counter, bruises flowering. She doesn’t care. She is raw nerves. She is consumed by his hunger. She is suspended within the sensation and the knowledge that Thranduil needs this as much as she does. Then Thranduil lets go of her throat and is screaming, filling her with his seed, as promised, in last deep shuddering thrusts. Feeling him stiffen and his semen flood her insides, brings Arafel to a shivering orgasm of her own. Thranduil feels her muscles contract around him, squeezing the last bit of him into herself. Still buried inside her, he lies on top of her, both of them shaking. 

When their heartbeats slow, he gets off her. Arafel, still bent over, unclenches her vaginal muscles and some semen runs down her thighs, then her calves to disappear into her boots. She is looking at him over her shoulder, under half-raised lashes. “Is this what you had in mind?”, her voice is all sex.

“Mhm”, Thranduil stares, as if spellbound. 

She straightens up, her back turned to him, straightening her dress, her legs spread. More of his semen runs down the inside and the back of each of her legs leaving trails which will dry silvery-white. Thranduil is half hard all over again. Arafel brings her legs together, turns on her tiptoes to face him, then brings her fingers to her bleeding neck, wipes at the blood, takes a step towards him and presses the fingers to his mouth. Thranduil sucks. She licks his bloody lips. 

“Do you want to be fucked again?”, he grabs her by the elbow.

“Yes”, she stares him down, “But later. You’re violent.”

“Oh”, he is mocking, “And you hate it”.

She smiles. “May I clean this?”, Arafel points to the actual wound on her neck. Rarely has he ever done this much damage. It hurts even through the curtain of cocaine. It must look like a dog attacked her. 

Thranduil smiles sweetly, “No.”

Arafel returns the smile. Then slowly picks up his right arm, takes a razor out of her purse and equally slowly starts cutting the inside of his forearm from the wrist halfway up to the elbow, looking into his eyes the entire time. Blood flows from the cut. Thranduil doesn’t try to stop her or withdraw his arm. She knows how deep to cut, deep enough to make him bleed, probably to scar him, but not deep enough to cut through any major blood vessels. Deep enough to make him shiver imperceptibly as he feels the razor break his skin. When Arafel brings his arm to her lips just before blood begins to drip on the floor and licks at it slowly, he is breathing faster. Like a cat cleaning her mate, she licks his entire arm clean, sucks on the cut until blood stops flowing. Thranduil is quiet, watching her hypnotized. When she finally raises her head, he grabs her and kisses her, forcing himself to push her away. Blood holds power over both of them. 

Without another word, he picks up his car keys and several more bags of coke which he sticks in his pockets, takes Arafel, who is wiping the blood of her lips with her fingers still grinning, by her hand and leads them out of the apartment. Arafel grabs her purse and follows without protest.


	4. We were born to die

Thranduil drives like a demon, taking sharp curves which hang over drops to which one cannot see the bottom at 120 mph, passing cars around blind corners, zipping past six and seven cars in a row at once, Lana del Ray’s “Summertime Sadness” blasting on the radio. Both brother and sister sing along…

_“Cruising down the coast going ‘about 99_  
_Got my bad baby by my side_  
_If I go, I’ll die happy tonight_

_Oh, my God, I feel it in the air_  
_Telephone wires above are sizzling like a snare_  
_Honey, I'm on fire, I feel it everywhere_  
_Nothing scares me anymore_ ” 

“Baby, we were born to die”, Thranduil says laughing, as he pulls Arafel into a kiss. She bursts out laughing. The irony and weight those words carry for them are simply too complicated for an alternate response. 

At the beginning of the Fourth Age of the World as the age of elves was slowly replaced by the age of men, three choices became available to the race of the Eldar still lingering in Middle Earth: 1) to go to the Undaying Lands, a parallel World not then far removed from this one, to the Eldar known as Valinor, to the race of man in the present time known as Fairy, or the Otherworld, a place which would in time drift away from Middle Earth and in it slip from history first into myth and then fairytale, 2) to remain in Middle Earth, in the world of men, and slowly fade becoming disembodied spirits, eventually losing memory and individual consciousness and becoming an integral part of the Natural World, or 3) to die in Middle Earth. However, since unlike the souls of men, which are transient visitors to Earth and depart it after death, the souls of Elves are bound to the Earth for eternity, they would undergo endless cycles of reincarnation until the end of the World. When the Earth itself finally ended, they would too. Furthermore, death would not take their memories away; they would remember everything. Finally, in order to avoid a different fate, they had to die violent deaths before the fading began. 

Thranduil and Arafel, to whom Valinor was only a legend, a place none of their people had ever seen, just a story shrouded in uncertainty and tainted with suffering and distrust, and who despite all the horrors they had seen in Middle Earth still loved it and believed it to be the Eldar’s true home, and who could above all not fathom abandoning their people, Sindar and Silvan elves, most of whom chose not to sail to Valinor sharing their convictions, chose this third way, despite its harsh and unpredictable conditions. And so they have died and been reborn many times through all the ages of human history. Many times they have laughed at how naïve they had all been. They had understood that their dominion over Middle Earth was over, that the once proud and immortal race of Elves would become irrelevant, that consequently, the World would inevitably change. But not even the longest and darkest vision of the elves could have imagined then what the race of men would turn the World into over the coming ages. And not even the most cynical of elves stopped to consider that gods often spoke in riddles and left many things unsaid. 

Their first death was the worst. As immortal beings they had no blueprint for death, no point of reference. 

Thranduil had said goodbye to Celebron and to Galadriel, who sailed with great apprehension for the curse of the Valar upon the house of Finwe had never been officially revoked, yet both remembered Valinor as their only true home and could not endure the thought of a permanent severing from it. And he said goodbye to Elrond, who raged at him in one last desperate attempt to change his mind. The two did not meet often in all the time they walked the same earth, but at certain critical junctions in their lives they had been there for each other in a multitude of ways. The concept of an everlasting separation, one equivalent to a mortal death, was painful beyond comprehension to the Eldar, who previous to this sundering did not encounter it. Finally, Elrond had given up a futile battle and they had spent their last night together. Thranduil asked him to look after his son, Elrond asked him to destroy Imladris when the time came for he had not had it in him to do it himself. For the next several hundred years, while Arafel continued existing in the shadows, Thranduil presided over the dying of not only his own kingdom but also of Lothlorien and Imladris as elves faded, faster in the two realms where their life force had for centuries been tied to the Rings of Power which were now gone, slower but nevertheless relentlessly in the Greenwood. 

He also saw the race of men falter, then fail. It would never rise again. The Kingdom of Gondor had lasted a mare 400 years after the return of its Numenorian kings. Arwen’s and Aragorn’s son was its last king. Soon after his death, Gondor fell into the hands of the Easterlings, the wild bands of humans formerly loyal to Sauron, who in short orders extinguished all civilization and knowledge. The human race blundered in darkness for long centuries after that, pierced only here and there by feeble and too short-lived sparks of light, but none would ever reach the learning or the splendor of those human cities which existed while the elves and the Maia still shared their world. Thranduil and Arafel recognized these cities they knew later, much later, in books, then films, under the names of Atlantis and Avalon. They were just stories to people, mythical places which few believed existed, enchanting and enticing, but ultimately as unreal as they themselves had become. Fairytales. 

Thranduil became disgusted by humans during these times. While he never had much use for humans past practical necessity in the past, he could certainly be civil to them, some he even respected. These men were different. Consumed by ghastly wars, which far superseded even the worst of the elven wars Thranduil knew and despised as a youth in their horrible brutality and senselessness, they were. And hell bent on destruction, smashing through everything which came before them without a single thought to or a vision for a future. And how brutally they ransacked the natural world, always fighting it, always aiming to subdue it, to rule it. He was powerfully repulsed. Savages. In future centuries this revulsion would only intensify. Both he and Arafel would come to resent, then despise, then hate the race of man. They were no better than Orcs. Their leaders no different than Sauron. 

When the total elven population dropped to only several hundred, after 5,000 years on the throne, Thranduil had had enough of being King. He was weary beyond endurance. And honestly heartsick. His last order as the Elvenking was to obliterate all traces of elven presence in Middle Earth. Dismantle all settlements. Destroy everything that one did not carry on one’s back. He closed the doors to his halls himself and buried them under a pile of rocks, never to be opened again. In front of what used to be his home, he wished the remaining of his kind well, laid his crown on the forest floor and for the first and last time in his life asked to be forgiven. Instead of accusing him of abandoning them, the elves, most of them born long after Thranduil was already old even by elven reckoning, came up to him one by one, kissed him, on his hands, on his cheeks, his forehead, his mouth, as each dared, silently thanking him for all that he had done, telling him everything they couldn’t verbalize, then vanished into the forest in complete silence. Thranduil stood rooted to the spot until day faded into night, centuries stacking upon centuries in rapid succession in his mind. Then he walked into the forest, he found Arafel, and he told her that he was done. 

“Done being King?”, she had asked him.

“Done. Period”, he told her. 

She looked deep into his eyes, and she understood. Her brother was no longer angry, he was no longer sad, as he had often been over the last centuries. He was tired past explanation. To ask him to go on would have been cruel. This was it. So she simply nodded. 

They made love that night more gently than had become usual for them. Then, stretched on their backs under the stars in the hours before dawn, they talked about how exactly they were going to kill themselves, thus fulfilling the condition of violent death, calmly, as if discussing battle strategy. They didn’t know anything, when or where or even if they would exist again, what the world would look like, and most terrifyingly, if they would ever find each other again. They were afraid. An immortal being cannot walk into Death on blind faith of a rebirth unflinching, it’s not in its genes, it’s contrary to its every instinct. But as the Sun broke over the horizon, brother and sister slid daggers between each other’s ribs and through each other’s hearts. Quickly, efficiently, looking into each other’s eyes with bitter smiles on their lips but without tears. They were born immortal, but in this new world, even immortality had become relative. It was 1,042 B.C. 

Centuries later, through stories told by their kin, those who were torn apart and those who were still together, they pieced together that how they died ensured that they remained always together. Souls of killers and their victims become linked and traveled together through time. The gods had not shared this with the Eldar. Thranduil and Arafel, along with many others had even less love for the Valar after they came to understand this. So many more of their own, separated from their mates, chose to fade. In the early cycles of reincarnation, one could still find an elf or two almost anywhere on Earth, but soon finding another became exquisitely rare. Humans called them fairies, with more specific names in different regions of the world. Some married into human families, elven/fairy blood passed into the human gene pool. 

Other facts the Valar had omitted. For example, that upon rebirth, their memory would return gradually, in confusing, often nonsensical fragments, and hit them full-force at any point between the transition from child to adult to years, even decades later. That meeting another of their kind triggered re-awakening of memory at any age. That as Valinor drifted further and further from the world of men, elven magic would grow thin in this world, and while some of them retained some of their inborn magic, which is as natural and integral to an elf as breathing, it would grow weaker and weaker with every cycle of death and rebirth and some of them would lose it all together. Many could not adjust. It was like losing eyesight or use of limbs to a human. Worse still, while in the beginning, they could live an average of five and six hundred years, life spans terribly short for a people once immortal but what seemed to them sufficient nevertheless, subsequent incarnations brought increasingly shorter life spans. Industrial revolution and resultant pollution, which seeped into every crack of the Earth, reduced their years to first equal then, gradually over the next three centuries, become shorter than those of man. As the Earth is being slowly poisoned so too are the creatures whose life-force cannot be separated from it. 

Thranduil and Arafel have both retained considerable magic, perhaps by being in proximity of each other. But they feel the trees dying like they once felt the blackness spreading over Greenwood, and it leeches life out of them. They feel the sickness in the air and it hurts to breathe. They will stay forever young, but they will not live to be old, not even by human standards. They will, of course, finish it themselves, becoming insensible clouds of electrons is a worse fate. And they’ve designed a thousand ways to die. Their own impending death, this one, and the thousands yet to come, they now take with a sense of humor, acquired by repetition and inevitability. But they find no humor in what has happened to their people in Middle Earth or in the death throws of the Earth itself. If they didn’t have each other, they are positive they’d have gone insane centuries ago. Still, they have wrath and sadness enough to separate countless heads from their respective bodies. It’s always there, at their fingertips. So close. 

Thranduil parks the car right in front of the club, brother and sister look at each other, and smile but half-heartedly. They grew quiet while immersed in the film rewinding in their heads, one and the same. Arafel says, “Good thing that we were heartless bastards then”. Thranduil laughs, “We’re still heartless bastards, dear sister.” He bites her lip. She grabs the back of his head before he can escape and pulls him into a deeper kiss. He is right, of course. Arafel wonders for a brief second if this is how Death marks those who walk through its Valley with memory fully intact over and over again or if its just who they always were. 

She’s snapped out of further thinking by a happy, drunken, “Ooo…. Girl… Come over here, you are beautiful!” followed by a hand on her upper arm pulling her out the car. By the time she looks up to see who her admirer is, Thranduil has him by the neck hissing an inch from his face, “Give my a reason not to break your neck”. The man is stunned into silence. Arafel is out of the car within a split second eyeing the club’s bouncers, on approach. If they get their hands on Thranduil, he’ll kill every man standing within proximity. Arafel steps into the bouncers’ path, signs for them to stop, give them a second. Knowing both her and Thranduil well, they acquiesce, although reluctantly. She approaches Thranduil like one approaches a cobra coiled and ready to strike, sliding her hand carefully into the hand he is not using to choke the breath out of the unfortunate guy, “T, come, let him go. It’s just a drunken human. Harmless.” Thranduil doesn’t budge. Arafel punctures the skin of his palm with her nails. Thranduil turns to glare at her. She glares back at him, repeats “Come”. And Thranduil lets the human go turning his attention to his sister. Arafel sees the flicker in his eyes, he is going to strike her. Which in itself would be nothing. She can feel blood pooling between their palms, she dug her nails deep. Violence between them is irrelevant. And he’s not an asshole, PTSD and drugs are a hell of a combination. But if he hits her here, it will cause serious chaos. She mouths, “Not here”. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches the bouncers take a step towards them. She waves them off with a quick flick of her wrist. They back off. Brother and sister stare at each other. 

Then, just like that, it’s over. Thranduil wraps his arms around her and they kiss long and hard. The bouncers try not to stare, some from fear of Thranduil’s unpredictable temper, some from shear discomfort, incest is incest even if they’ve seen it many times and like both brother and sister. But they stare anyway, like one can’t stop staring at wild fire. 

Once inside, under the cover of darkness, Arafel takes Thranduil’s bloody hand and licks the blood off. She doesn’t ask if it hurts. It does.

“Do you want more?”, he grabs her by the back of the neck and brings her mouth to his neck, speaking into her ear, “If you want more, it’s right here”, his voice is deeper than usual, almost a growl. 

“No”, Arafel tries to lift her head. He doesn’t let her, “Too late, sister. Bite. That’s an order.” He pins her body to his with his free arm. 

Arafel’s blood boils. “Yes, my King.” She’s not mocking him. Although he is never serious, in a way, he will always be King to her. She puts her hands on his head to extend his neck and sinks her teeth deep, breaking skin immediately. Thranduil moans, holds onto her tighter. Her hands tangle into his hair, and she pushes him back into the nearby wall, biting deeper and deeper, blood flowing freely into her mouth, down her throat. Thranduil lets his head fall back against the wall, eyes closed, moaning loudly, not caring who hears him. And people stare, some with mouths wide open, others trying and failing to avert their eyes, yet others clutching their fists trying to control their lust, some quietly gasping. Thranduil is always beautiful, but like this, he is irresistible. 

Only when Arafel lets him go and turns around to face the gathered crowd, do people, seeing the blood staining her mouth, dangerously narrowed eyes and the extent of damage to Thranduil’s throat, gasp in horror, cover their mouths and stagger hurriedly away. Brother and sister laugh. They shouldn’t be here. They’re too much for human consumption. Their handling of each other when they’re like this is too cruel, too intense for people to abide, and it does defy explanation. Of this they are aware. They do not intend to shock, but they certainly don’t care about any discomfort they cause. Considering theirs at best tenuous relationship with humanity, more accurately described as outright disdain bordering on hate, if a couple of humans are inconvenienced by their behavior, so what. 

“Come. Bathroom. Then dancing”, Thranduil is pulling Arafel along through the crowd as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. 

On the way to the bathroom, Arafel spots Kate sitting at the bar, throwing back a shot, piercing them with a look like one of their son’s arrows. She squeezes Thranduil’s hand. He’s already seen her, “I know, I might lose more blood tonight”, he’s laughing. 

Once in the co-ed bathroom, Arafel rubs her eyes sighing, “Get me high, now.” 

Thranduil rises an eyebrow, “And you are not?”

“Higher. A lot higher.”

He holds a key loaded with white to her nose, hands steady. She inhales it. The next one goes up his nose. And so on, back and forth, they go through a bag and a half within minutes. A lot, even for them. Once upon a time, their thundering, much too fast heartbeats, which they can feel as they press against each other might have scared them. Now they give into the head rush, and the brief tingling dizziness that follows as their lungs struggle to supply sufficient oxygen, and how reality frame-shifts into something just a little more vivid, just a little more alive, and the feel of each other’s skin, how every touch sears. 

Arafel is running her tongue over the bite she put in Thranduil’s neck earlier causing him to throw his head backwards and grind his hips against her, when a feather light touch on Arafels wrist makes her turn her head in its direction. Thranduil is immediately alert and irritated. 

“A, do you have anything I can borrow?” It’s a man Thranduil occasionally shares a bed with, his forehead lined with beads of sweat, his hands cold and shaking.

“You don’t borrow, you take”, Thranduil is venomous, annoyed at the interruption.

Arafel skewers him with a look and a silent warning, “Don’t be heartless”. She’s always strangely kind in these types of situations.

“What? I give him all of my heart every time I let him fuck me”, Thranduil’s replay is also unheard by anyone other than his sister, who rolls her eyes at him “Heart? Really?”. Thranduil rolls his eyes, “Details, baby, details. The point is charity”, but he tosses the remaining half bag to the man adding, “Do try not to die while in possession of that, my fingerprints are on it”. 

The man has the sense to disappear immediately muttering a thank you. Thranduil turns his attention back to his sister picking her up and sitting her on the edge of a sink, her legs wrapped around his hips. They graze each other’s necks with teeth, causing shudders to run up their spines. He grinds himself into her, the only thing separating his bulging erection from her the leather of his trousers, which is being liberally soaked by the wetness between her legs. They don’t talk and they have their eyes closed, consumed by sensation. 

When a hand that is not Arafel’s tangles into Thranduil’s hair and pulls his head roughly back, Thranduil opens his eyes, but he does so lazily, as if bored, and does not let go of Arafel, nor stop doing what he is doing. If somebody wants to play with him like this, they will learn what taunting a panther feels like. 

Arafel wears the same expression. And her voice reflects it, “Really Kate, you might want to check into rehab. Stalking people into bathrooms seems to be a habit with you.”

Thranduil rolls his eyes as he leans his head further back to look at Kate properly and adds, “Now what?”

“Are you going to fuck her right here?”, Kate can barely get the words out.

Thranduil looks bored to tears, “Why? Do you want to watch?” 

Kate twists his hair to make it hurt, but gets no reaction. “You’re seriously deranged.” With that she throws Thranduil’s head forward hard enough that his forehead collides with Arafel’s shoulder, and strides out of the bathroom. 

Thranduil laughs. Arafel rolls her eyes, pushes him off of her and hops off the sink, “Let’s go dance”. Thranduil moves to the mirror to straighten out his hair. He watches his mangled neck as he works his fingers through the strands. “You’re an animal”, the words are obviously directed at Arafel, who steps behind him, wraps her hands around his waist, then slides them lower, over his groin and to his still obviously swollen cock, and standing on her toes whispers against his ear, “I learned from you”. 

When they dance, they lose themselves to the music and to each other. There is no world outside the beat and each other’s needy hands and bodies. But the world, of course, is watching. Kate is watching too, downing shot after shot of Stoli, getting angrier and more aroused as song follows song and brother and sister continue sliding over each other with the grace and pent-up lethality of dancing snakes. Several times, the well-intended bartender has tried to speak to her, tried to tell her to stay away from those two, that everyone who has tried to get close has gotten annihilated in one way or another. But Kate can’t listen. The bartender lets it go, they never can. 

“She’s been staring at us all night”, Thranduil is telling Arafel pressed against her back, both of them close to the floor, legs spread wide, his hands on her groin both concealing her nudity and stimulating her. 

“I know”, she replies through hitched breaths, “And?”

“Do you want an audience tonight?”

“She’ll want to kill us”, they are standing again and Arafel turns to face him, “the question is how far are _you_ willing to let her go?”

His expression tells her everything. Far. As far as it takes to unhinge this human. Thranduil knows that Arafel can easily endure a lot more physical abuse than the previous night. She knows that he plans to take the majority of it anyway. Both of them will enjoy it, at least most of it. Arafel grins. “I’ll leave it to you then, Sir. Please, lead.” 

They walk towards the bar where Kate has been sitting all night, arms around each other’s waists. They stop in front of her, all smiles. 

Kate throws a full shot into Arafel’s face accompanied by a snarled, “I hate you.” She’s slurring the words slightly. 

For a moment, nobody in the vicinity of the bar moves. Everybody expects either Arafel herself, or failing that, her brother, to slam Kate’s head into the bar and leave her unconscious on the floor. Most everybody has seen this exact scenario play out before. But tonight, brother and sister have crueler plans. Thranduil stands still, his face expressionless. Arafel simply takes a napkin from the bar, wipes her face and regards Kate for a long moment. 

Then Arafel smiles, “I know, darling”, and kisses Kate on the cheek. Kate moves to strike her, then remembers where she is and stops herself. Arafel smirks. 

Thranduil moves behind Kate's chair, takes her jacket of the back and holds it for her, “Come on, let’s go, love.”

Kate turns around and looks at him with such disdain that even Thranduil is impressed, “Go? I am not going anywhere with you.”

Thranduil smiles, bends down until his face is at level with Kate's and mare inches away, and lowers his voice to a cadence he knows no man or woman, no matter their inclination can resist, “No? And what if I told you that I would let you have your way with me tonight?” 

Kate is silent, clearly paying attention. Thranduil begins stroking her forearm with one finger and she offers no protest.

The bartender watches in the background, closes his eyes and shakes his head. He doesn’t hate brother and sister, he doesn’t even dislike them and couldn’t care less about their unconventional preferences, but he knows they leave train wrecks behind them. And, perceptive, as bartenders want to be, he senses something otherworldly about them, something too old and too tangled up with Death. It makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. 

Thranduil continues, “You could make me bleed… any way you wished. You could fuck me… You could hurt me as much as you wanted to…”, his voice is pure silk. “And Arafel too. You can show us both how much you hate us. No rules but yours.”

Kate swallows hard. “No rules?”, she looks to Arafel, who only nods confirming her brother’s words. 

Thranduil stands up to full height, offers Kate her coat again. Kate turns to the bar, and orders two more shots. Arafel and Thranduil smile like wolves who have just chased their pray into a corner. The bartender sighs and brings Kate her shots, making each a double, drawing the sign of the cross over them. “Take Me to Church” comes on. Arafel bursts out laughing. She mouths the words to the bartender, “We were born sick, you heard her say it… But we love it… Take me to church, I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies, I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife”. The bartender is speechless. Thranduil can barely contain laughter. Kate drains the shots, oblivious, then gets up and puts on the offered jacket. She only asks that they take her car so she has the means to leave. Arafel and Thranduil easily agree, leaving theirs. 

This time, Kate hands the keys over to Arafel without anybody asking. Thranduil gets in the back seat, but is quickly climbing into the front to play with the radio, then proceeds to help himself to some more coke and serves some to Arafel. When he also offers some to Kate, simply because she’s there, and she accepts, both brother and sister are completely surprised but neither comment. Thranduil takes another hit thinking half-seriously, “This might hurt more than I thought”. Arafel adds, across her shoulder, “Mhm, it might”. 

“Might what?”, asks Kate.

“Nothing, darling”, Arafel briefly looks in her direction, then starts tracing her inner thigh with a finger. Kate crushes her hand and puts it back on the gearshift, “Did I tell you that you could touch me?”

Arafel stars straight at the road her expression stone, “Your rules, my apologies, I forgot.” Inwardly she smiles understanding the apparent mood, and is relieved. If Kate doesn’t want her to touch her, all the better. 

Once they are in the apartment, it’s clear that Kate means to hold Thranduil to his promise. No sooner does he close the door than she has her hands around the back of both of their necks digging her fingers into the sides where they are sure to leave bruises and is marching them into the bedroom. Brother and sister drop everything they hold in their hands and let her. 

“Don’t fuck with me this time”, Kate growls into Arafel’s ear, referring to the illusion she created to disorient her last night, now, entering the same space, fully convinced of its authenticity again. Arafel raises her hands signaling surrender. Thranduil bites his lip to suppress laughter. Kate yanks him by his hair. Thranduil hates nothing more than being dragged around by his hair. His expression flips from amused to furious in an instant, but he takes a deep breath and retains composure. He did say anything would go. 

“Strip”, Kate orders and sits on the bed, taking off her jacket. 

Thranduil tosses his hair over his shoulders and slowly, like he is stretching, takes his shirt of as he leans into a deep back bend, his hair sweeping the floor, letting the shirt fall onto the floor behind him. He comes back up to standing in an equally fluid motion, then turns towards Arafel who is watching him approvingly. He puts his hands on her shoulders and turns her back to him looking at Kate the entire time. Slowly, he begins unzipping her dress. When Kate doesn’t object, he pulls the zipper all the way down, than bends her over so that her body forms an “L”. They both continue looking at Kate as he starts slowly grinding against her. Kate doesn’t say anything. Arafel bends all the way over and unbuckles both Thranduil’s boots and her own. They straighten up, her back fully pressed against him and step out of the footware. Arafel turns around and starts unbuttoning his trousers. When she has the buttons undone and enough room to slide her hands inside, Kate interrupts, “Take them off”. 

Arafel slides the leather over Thranduil’s hips, down his thighs and around his ankles, kneeling in front of him as she does so. He steps out of the heap and she tosses them to the side. 

“Take her dress off”, Kate orders. Arafel lifts her arms above her head and Thranduil pulls the dress over her head tossing it to the side as well. Brother and sister are in profile to Kate, Arafel on her knees, mouth in line and inches away from his fully erect cock. They would like nothing more than to finally and completely tare into each other after a long night of restrained and teasing touches, but they both keep their hands behind their backs and are looking not at each other but at Kate. It’s Kate’s rules. And Kate makes them wait. 

“Did you force her the first time?”, Kate directs her question at Thranduil.

Arafel answers, “No.”

Kate moves faster than anticipated and strikes Arafel hard across the face, “I didn’t ask you. I asked him.” Arafel stays as still as a statue. Thranduil’s fists clench and unclench. 

Kate rephrases her question, “Did you _ever_ force her?”

“Once.”

“Why?”

“Because it was necessary.”

“Explain.”

“No.”

Kate repeats her request. Thranduil refuses again. When asked Arafel only repeats his words and likewise refuses to elaborate. Kate is standing on the ledge without knowing it. Arafel wants to kill her. This line of questioning is crossing the line she will tolerate for very long. One lifetime of having her brother accused of hurting her was enough for eternity. Thranduil knows. His fingers are twitching imperceptibly. If Arafel snaps, he has no intention of stopping her, but he will be ready to help her. 

Kate, whether by sensing the sudden tension as prey animals often do or by stroke of luck, saves herself. “Ok, you don’t have to talk, but you will use your pretty whore mouth for something.” She grabs Arafel by the ears and shoves her head forward so that she is forced to take all of Thranduil’s cock into her mouth. Kate holds her head down when her lips reach the base. Arafel can’t breathe, but after the first few seconds she manages to relax her throat enough for him to slip down her throat and stop gagging. She doesn’t fight Kate. She doesn’t mind at all. Thranduil himself has done this to her. She loves it. She would only prefer his hands on her head. Kate touching her has turned repulsive. 

When his cock slips into his sister’s throat, Thranduil lets out a moan, rakes his fingers through her hair. Kate lets go of Arafel’s head. After she takes a quick breath, she immediately sinks down on her brother again, taking him into her mouth completely. It’s his hands that hold her head in place this time. 

“Oh, you little bitch, you love this.” Kate is half-disgusted, half-amazed as she finds Arafel dripping wet. Choking on her brother’s cock was supposed to be punishment, or at least uncomfortable for both of them, but apparently they love it. 

Standing over Arafel, she traces the newly sawn up gash on her back with her index finger. “Which one of you didn’t want this to scar?”, she asks Thranduil.

“Me.”

“Who put the rest of the scars on her?”

“I did.”

Kate shakes her head, “Unbelievable”, then circles around to stand behind him and studies a much more intricate mesh of scars covering him. Shallower, shorter cuts, irregular, but many in number. Nails? Razors? Kate decides she doesn’t want to know. Thranduil has stopped paying attention to her and is completely focused on Arafel. He let go off her head and is letting her suck him at her own pace. She is focusing only on the head as she inserts two fingers into her wet cunt before sliding her hand between his legs to induce him to spread them. When she slides her fingers one after another slowly but with practiced certainty inside him, she takes his entire length into his mouth again. 

Thranduil closes his eyes and lets out a satisfied gasp when he is breached by his sister’s familiar fingers. He grabs onto her shoulders for support, unsure how much longer he’ll be able to keep standing. 

Kate’s fingers, shielded from Arafel’s view by his body, find her clitoris. She is watching them intently. “Use your teeth on him”, she orders Arafel, her breath catching. 

Arafel glances up at her brother who opens his eyes only to acknowledge that he had heard and inclines his head to allow it, too subtly for Kate to notice. Arafel rakes her teeth along the underside of his cock, lightly at first, experimentally. Thranduil shivers in response. She uses teeth on top and bottom on the next pass watching his face the entire time. Thranduil gasps. She does it again. “Harder”, he breathes. Arafel licks her lips, goes down all the way using her lips only, then back up to the tip using her teeth. This time she draws blood. Thranduil’s breath hitches, and she can feel his anal muscles contract around her fingers. She lets go of his cock and withdraws her fingers. He moans, annoyed. She puts her fingers inside herself only to lubricate them again adding a third, then enters him again with all three fingers. Thranduil can’t stand any more and kneels, legs apart. Arafel, lowers herself to lay on the floor in front of him holding herself up on one elbow, takes his cock into her mouth sucking the blood. When she looks at him, he holds her gaze, “Again”. She doesn’t hesitate. Teeth rip new paths on the way down. She sucks the blood on the way up. Thranduil grabs her wrist behind him and shoves her fingers deeper into himself arching his back. 

While brother and sister were consumed with each other, Kate had visited the infamous nightstand and is now standing behind Thranduil with a strap-on and not a lot of patience.

She grabs Thranduil by the hair again, her voice dripping with hate, “Are you ready, pretty boy?”, and drags him away from Arafel, pushing him onto the floor on his knees and elbows. 

“Do you always ask irrelevant questions?” Thranduil saw her selection out of the corner of his eye and knows he is not ready. He also knows how much Kate doesn’t care. 

He has just enough time to move his head before the whip hits him diagonally from hipbone to shoulder, the end wrapping around the shoulder onto his chest. His skin splits like cream. This is one of their special ones, made to order. The leather is hard and thin, the edges sharp. It’s made for drawing blood fast and its sting is severe. The damage inflicted, especially by someone who doesn’t know how to use it, is also severe. Thranduil understands she’s going to trash him to the brink of unconsciousness and the scars will be permanent. Fine. He will find a way to enjoy it. But she will break into a thousand uncollectable pieces. They all think revenge is simple, they all find out differently. He laughs like a lunatic. 

“You like this?”, Kate hisses.

He doesn’t replay. He is done talking. Let her figure it out. She delivers two more savage blows similar to the first, one in the opposite diagonal, one down the middle of his back. Thranduil closes his eyes with each one, but his breathing is steady and he doesn’t move. Between the blows, his eyes are locked with Arafel’s. Kate lashes her across the back, ass and upper thigh. A single strike and surprisingly careful to miss the sutures, but opening her skin nevertheless, and warns her not to come closer as she circles Thranduil from the back, delivers another blow across his lower back and ass, then grabs onto his hips and enters him. This time, he clenches his teeth and bites his tongue to keep quiet. Arafel can tell by how hard his jaw is set. By how his fingers dig into his elbows. Kate is hurting him as much as possible, pulling out and thrusting in all the way. The phallus is hard and unyielding, and very large. All of Arafel’s lubrication is gone by now, and Thranduil is being torn, a fact which Kate, seeing blood on the dildo, relishes.

But Thranduil, like his sister, is addicted to pain. Within minutes, to Kate’s utter disbelief, he is breathing hard and thrusting back against her. “Like sister, like brother”, thinks Kate. His eyes are still locked with Arafel’s, who is still laying on her stomach on the floor and rubbing herself against it. What’s more, Thranduil’s returned thrusts and the friction they create are bringing Kate closer and closer to climax. She lashes him across the shoulders, blood long having spilled on the floor, and fucks him hard, like they both demand it. 

When she cums with shivers running up her spine, she pulls out of him, pushing him to the floor. He is clearly irritated, frustrated, completely unsatisfied, his cock begging for release, and Kate is momentarily too exhausted and too wrapped up in herself to fight him. She manages, panting still, “Go ahead, fuck her”.

They don’t need to be told again. Arafel picks her pelvis up of the floor, and he is on top of her in an instant pressing her shoulders to the floor with his forearm, pulling her hips towards his using his other arm and entering her fully. As he does, he emits a low growl as the unexpected pain hits him. He had forgotten the work Arafel’s teeth did on his cock. But he’s a long way past pain, and he needs release. Arafel puts her hands under her head to stop it from hitting the floor, he is pounding into her that hard, that urgently, and pants, “Don’t hold back”. It only takes Thranduil several hard thrusts to spill his seed deep inside her, but it’s a savage coupling. When he is emptied, still inside her, he collapses on top of her, then holds her as she shivers through her own orgasm. When he pulls out, his cock and her thighs are stained pink, a mixture of his seed and blood. Most of the blood is his, some of it is hers. 

Kate lets them rest for a couple of minutes. Not because she feels sympathy, on the contrary she’s not yet done with them, but it maddens her how they can be so incredibly violent with each other, yet so clearly protective of each other. No such equation exists in her mind’s calculator. No such recipe for love. Yet here it is. Whatever this is. She watches them curled up against each other half asleep as if watching will make her understand. It only keeps her angry. 

Thranduil and Arafel are woken up by a lash of the whip over their exposed hips. It wraps over Thranduil’s lower back, Arafel instinctively grabs the tail end snatching it into her hand, then awake, realizing where she is, lets it go. She doesn’t feel like being beaten any more tonight, but they have never lost this kind of war, and tonight will not be different. 

“Clean each other up. You are both disgusting” is Kate’s next order. They get to work, licking blood and semen off of each other’s genitals. Normally, this would get them aroused all over again, but they are spent and it only feels soothing. They don’t bother with the rest, there is blood all over them, that will take a bath to clean. Kate watches in silence, rage building with every passing minute. If anyone asked her to specify the reason, she would be incapable of verbalizing it, but it’s visceral and untamable. When Arafel and Thranduil deem themselves as clean as they will be, they kneel next to each other sitting back on their heels, several feet in front of Kate, hoping that she has been sufficiently amused, realizing instantly that she hasn’t.

She hasn’t. She starts interrogating them again, courtroom style. Who approached whom first? Did their parents know? How old were they? Was there ever anybody else for either of them? Are they not ashamed?

Each refusal to answer a question gets each of them a skin-splitting blow. They alternate, across their backs, fronts, flanks, high, low, anywhere she can reach them. Thranduil and Arafel have morphed into frozen replicas of themselves. Not a single muscle moves. Their faces are frozen. They do not answer a single question. Kate can beat them into unconsciousness for all they care. This idiotic game, they will not play. 

Kate persists for some half an hour, brother and sister remain perfectly still. Blood flows staining their floor. Finally, when a careless blow wraps the whip around both Arafel and Thranduil’s necks, the resulting cuts that look too much like murder snap Kate out of her trance. If Thranduil wasn’t worlds away, he would be laughing. Kate’s face is a mask of perfect horror. She drops the whip. She can suddenly not breathe, feels like the very walls are closing in on her. She stumbles through the door and runs out of the apartment like the hounds of hell are chasing her leaving her jacket behind. Her hands are shaking so hard that she barely gets the keys into the ignition. She is talking to herself, the only recognizable words, “I am a monster… I am a monster… I am a monster…” all the way home, where she jumps into the shower and scrubs her skin until it hurts and the water runs cold. But she can’t wash the blood away.


	5. Anatomy of the trivial

Thranduil and Arafel drift back into this world slowly, indecisively, somewhere in the late afternoon. Sober and cold. Nausea, dizziness and mind-splitting headaches obliterating pain they have yet to feel. Curled up on the floor in fetal positions facing each other, brother and sister are looking into each others eyes, each thinking the same three things in succession: this is why this shit should end… but not today… so one of us will have to crawl off this bloody floor. But neither speaks and neither moves as much as to lift their head until Thranduil is covered in a thin film of sweat and shivering. 

Then Arafel does, crawl, fights off a wave of nausea that has her nearly retching over the toilet, because if she starts she won’t stop, grabs one of the several coke bags left in the drawer of the vanity, can’t instantly locate straws or a mirror, is too sick to care, sees a pair of scissors and uses the tips for a scoop instead. Between her shaking hands and the small surface, it takes several tries, but by the time she’s sitting on the floor next to her brother, picking his head up to rest it on her thigh, she is beginning to feel like she might not throw up. And when she holds the loaded scissors to Thranduil’s nose, her hands have almost stopped shaking. Thranduil closes his eyes as he inhales, his face visibly relaxing after several more hits. And by the time they finish the bag between them and are laying on their backs on the floor, their bodies touching, they are still cold but they no longer feel like dying is a simpler option and their heads are clearing. 

Staring at the ceiling in the dark, another day gone, they haven’t spoken a word yet. Nor does either of them feel the need to. There’s nothing to talk about, nothing that relates to last night at least. Thranduil simply reaches for his sister’s hand, intertwining his fingers with hers; Arafel squeezes his fingers in acknowledgement, leans her head onto his shoulder, and they’ve told each other all they needed to know. They’re fine. 

Minutes pass in the dark, in the silence, before Arafel finally speaks, “I have a ton of work to do. I imagine you do to.” 

“All week.”

That washing themselves and the floor is first necessary and that they will both require help is self-evident. And it hurts enough for even Thranduil to clench his teeth when the hot water hits him. It hurts enough to think about getting properly fucked up all over again, an impulse they keep each other from following, even when it takes the force of Arafel’s nails slicing through her brother’s wrist, turning the water a more alarming red. She does it for herself as much as for him. Knowledge of the shit existing 5 feet away in a drawer where she can’t see it is a thing she can resist, having it right under her nose, she knows she can’t. 

They scrub each other clean, making the deeper gashes open all over again. But it’s fine, they’ve long learned how to be comfortable being uncomfortable. However, when Thranduil reaches for his sowing kit, Arafel’s had enough, “Who is this for, T? Me? You? When did we become repulsed by scars? Or does it bother you that these, we _chose_ to put there?” She’s not angry, her voice holds no argument; she just genuinely finds it absurd. She expects a raging storm in return. Thranduil has been insistent with minimizing the fucking scars, on her that is; he doesn’t care about the ones on himself whatsoever. But Thranduil simply puts the pouch away, smiles, gently passes his thumb over the deep cut on her neck, licks the blood away, and says, “They don’t bother me at all”. Just like that. And the smile is real. Arafel kisses his cheek. 

So it’s simple disinfectant and some healing ointment. The new scars left to form as they will. Black T-shirts, black cotton leggings, because there still is and will be more blood, new sheets on the bed, also black, surgical cleaner for the floor (it gets the blood off), an opened bottle of white wine, all within 15 minutes (efficiency is their _modus operandi_ ), and they settle on the the living room floor to work. 

Several hours later, in the dead, silent part of the night, the living room is fully canvased in court files overlapping science papers overlapping records of old trials overlapping grants and old grant reviews, environmental science books overlapping medical textbooks. Somehow, amidst this apparent chaos, the two individuals stretched on their stomachs in T-formation with respect to each other and typing furiously on their laptops, are fully aware of the exact location of each required piece of information at any given moment. They have always worked together like this. When they were just ordinary young elves, all those thousands of years ago, their father used to love watching them study. He said it looked like an elaborately choreographed dance, how they reached around each other without as much as having to look where the other’s hands moved. So close they were practically on top of each other, they never interfered with each other’s work. 

In truth, they work better like this, in close physical proximity. It gives them focus, and stamina. Over time, it has become obvious even to them that they were increasingly dependent on each other in every way. In the beginning they could communicate without words and they sensed each other’s presence and mood, but that was nothing unusual for the Eldar. Later, at some point, they figured out that they could not only enter each other’s thoughts but also use them to focus and direct their own as well as alter those of others’ and even external events to a degree. Now, when they are together, they are more than each is separately, but if they are apart for longer than a couple of days, they grow weaker, physically, mentally, even emotionally. Apart, they are breakable. Psychologists have a word for it in this time - codependence, dangerous and unhealthy, ten fold more so between siblings. Thranduil and Arafel don’t give a fuck what it’s called or with what kind of health warning it comes. They know perfectly well what self-destruction is and how enabling it works, they learned about that in medical school classes (when they thought becoming doctors would be a good idea; it wasn’t), with the psychologists, and the psychiatrists. They don’t give a fuck about that either. They don’t think about life like that. They think about purpose, their assigned roles in the fabric of life, what it’s all for, and how it ends. Their world and their concept of time does not allow for individualism to be paramount, and psychology is centered upon the individual. Consequently, to them, such concerns are trivial. Although, when Arafel discovered the later works of C. G. Jung, the thoughts he recorded late in his life about collective consciousness and synchronicity and inter-world travel, widely disregarded as mad ramblings and not a part of any curriculum, brother and sister were fascinated. This they understood, this made sense. But self-destruction, self-love, self-respect, self-renewal, self-empowerment, self-improvement, self-preservation, this human obsession with the self and all the acrobatics humans did to aggrandize the self, this cult of the self, this collective ego trip, this they couldn’t understand. What possible importance all this could have in the grand scheme of Life, other than to distract and divert from what _was_ important – identifying an individual’s purpose in the great fabric of Life and fulfilling it – would never make any sense to them. 

They often worked late into the night, sometimes all night. Some who professed to know them said that this was how the drugs started. That brother and sister never sleep and use drugs to stay awake. It’s not how it started, or why it continues. It started how it always starts, in every lifetime. It started to put up a wall between them and the noise of human voices and their death and their destruction. Then they figured out that the drugs could also take the nightmares away. And if the physical consequences that came along with it were the price, they were perfectly willing to pay. And this, this now, this is nothing. In other lives, it had been much worse. When they first discovered opiates, in the form of opium, they sought, and found, total and constant annihilation. Over the centuries, they figured out how to walk the wire between stark reality and complete oblivion with the skill of tightrope walkers. 

In the present reality, they both work towards the same essential goal, Arafel as an attorney, Thranduil as a scientist (doctoring abandoned within a few short years). They are trying to save what is left of the natural Earth. Fighting the same loosing battle that began when this world was called Middle Earth and its enemy Sauron. Stubbornly. Still. And so it goes - their lives, the drugs, and the War. How Arafel and Thranduil see the drugs, including on days like this, when it’s entirely obvious who’s whose bitch, as neither remarkable nor tragic and most irrelevant in the grand analysis, is unlikely to be understood by most in this world. They don’t try explaining. They just hang around people with habits more questionable than their own. And are who they’ve always been, whoever you most desire them to be or your most terrifying dream. And who they have become. A glimpse in a rearview mirror, an impression, a question much more so than an answer, a moment, a trick of the light, a shade. Sometimes they’re cruel; sometimes they’re kind. Thranduil read in a book that it’s apparently in their nature to be unpredictable and fickle. Arafel didn’t stop laughing for days, wrote “Feary Dust” on all the cocaine bags. And they put their minds into their work, where they unfailingly deliver. And let the world think what it wants, and above all what it needs to keep its thin veneer of sanity intact. 

At 6 am, the laptops and most of the papers are neatly packed into a leather briefcase, Arafel’s, and a leather messenger bag, Thranduil’s. Thranduil’s cutting up a grapefruit in the kitchen, while Arafel’s getting dressed. When she emerges, there’s grapefruit in a bowel, orange juice in two glasses and six neat white lines on a silver mirror, straws included, on the kitchen counter. There’s some kind of fruit every morning, although most often nobody touches it. Thranduil still insists it should be available. Sometimes he makes eggs. Sometimes one of them will eat a single bite. They do drink the orange juice. Every morning. Followed by the cocaine. 

The rest depends. Today it’s Thranduil leaning over the counter, looking up at Arafel after she’s kissed him and told him she had to go, eyebrows arched. 

“What?”

“What do you intend to say about this?”, he drags his index finger along the exposed and still angry cut on her neck. 

Arafel smirks, “Riding accident. If anyone asks, which no one will.” 

Thranduil laughs, “Clever. Ever heard of scarfs?”

“No.” He knows she hates scarfs; they feel too much like nooses. “I will see you tonight.”

“I’ll have dinner ready”, Thranduil grins. She laughs, walking out the door. She can’t remember the last time either of them ate a meal. 

Arafel’s day is meetings with clients until 2 pm, then a deposition at 3. It’s another environmental hazard case, the only kind she takes. And it’s like all others, bullshit through the roof. She’s used to it, and ready, as always. It goes as well as can be hoped for. As she’s leaving the courtroom, she sees Kate with her team of handlers, as Arafel likes to call the senior partners in Kate’s firm. She intends to just walk away, but then she catches Kate looking at her and quickly dropping her eyes to the floor. And she can’t resist. Because she heard what Kate muttered to herself fleeing the scene of the “crime”. 

So, Arafel, to Kate’s horror, changes direction. She’ll be standing next to her in under 20 seconds. All sorts of horrors flicker through Kate’s mind, of what Arafel will do, of what she could do. By the time Arafel arrives, Kate is visibly shaking. But Arafel only slows down, smiles, says “Nice to see you, counselor”, and walks away. However, she made sure that Kate saw the gash on her neck, and that when Kate turned to look after her, she saw her jacket hanging over Arafel’s briefcase, the jacket she had left behind when she ran away. 

The last thing Arafel hears as she’s exiting the courthouse is Kate, voice cracking, making hasty excuses to separate herself from her co-workers, and grins, “Mission accomplished, bitch”. 

Thranduil arrives to his lab around 10:30, early for him. Early for his lab personnel as well judging by half of them not being there. He doesn’t care, which was a point of contention with the University’s powers that be some years ago, before Thranduil explained that since he was the one paying their salaries, he will be the one dictating their hours and if anybody had a problem with that, they can call him _and_ his lab a moving truck and kiss his ass as he’s walking out the door. Since Thranduil’s ass was worth a lot of money to the University, nobody mentioned his lab’s working hours ever again. In fact, since that day, nobody said much of anything regarding any of the lab’s eccentricities again.

But Thranduil knew that if he ever lost the money or if he pushed too far, all of his people’s necks would be on the chopping block. So no matter how much he hated the ever-increasing amounts of bullshit that came with his job, he put up with it. The many times he wanted to quit, wondering if he could do more useful things elsewhere, he didn’t. When he wanted to say “No”, many times he said, “Yes”. When he wanted to separate moronic heads from their idiot bodies, he went out instead, picked up the most brutal asshole he could find and let him (occasionally her) turn his body into a punching bag, fuck him into oblivion, until he couldn’t think about killing, until he couldn’t think about anything any more. And he wrote grant application after grant application, and he got them funded when very few others did. 

The people who worked for him didn’t know what he did for them, but they suspected, or sensed it. And, without exactly understanding, they returned the favor. They were dedicated to the work they were doing and devoted to Thranduil; the lab was productive. To everyone who didn’t know him, to everyone who didn’t ask him what he thought, what he felt, Thranduil just seemed easily, effortlessly on top of the world. Nobody asked him. Not that he would have actually spoken the truth if somebody had. When it comes to what he’s thinking and especially what he’s feeling, Thranduil has been telling only lies to practically everyone, all the time, for 8,000 years. 

To everyone but his sister, Thranduil is a persona. To some an unpredictable, possibly quite dangerous, asshole. If you asked why exactly he was dangerous, or an asshole, most couldn’t answer, and those who could wouldn’t. To others he’s a competent scientist but otherwise a complete enigma. To yet others, he’s an airhead, flighty and impulsive. To some, he’s a combination of all of that. To everyone, he is cold, heartless, entirely devoid of human emotion, although rare few will swear that he can be uncharacteristically kind. Everything he does looks easy. And so he appears always perfectly fine, content, bothered by nothing. A king sitting prettily on his throne. If anyone asked him, Thranduil would tell them that it was a kingdom of dirt. But a kingdom is better than no kingdom.

And all kingdoms are better with guards at the gates. So, today, he was warned by one of his technicians that some girl named Melissa was looking for him.

“She says she’s your little sister?”, the tech added helpfully when Thranduil only stared at him, then proceeded with, “Do you want me to tell her you’re not here?” when Thranduil still offered no response. 

“No, no… show my darling sister in”, and bring me a razorblade, thinks Thranduil, not even trying to conceal the acid in his voice.

When Melissa is shown into his office, all smiles, arms extended as if she is going to embrace him, he doesn’t get out of his chair. He deflates her with a simple, “Hello, Melissa”, which he has managed to leach the acid out of but not the polar winter night. It freezes her straight into the chair across his desk which she backs four feet further into the wall behind her. 

Still she manages a chirpy, “Hi! It’s good to see you!”

“What do you want?” Thranduil hasn’t changed his tone. Nor will he. 

Melissa’s smile drops, turns into a pout, as theatrical and as fake as the smile, “Why can’t I just come to see you? See how you are? Say hi? I haven’t seen you in 4 years!”

“Cut the performance, Melissa. I’m busy.”

“Fine”, she drops all further attempts at pleasantries, “I would like you and Arafel to come to dinner with me and my fiancé tonight”. 

Thranduil bursts out laughing. He’s about to say something to the effect of being impressed by her newly developed humor, but realizes that she’s not only serious but on the verge of tears. Her expression does not betray it, she wouldn’t have survived this family if she let tears fall so easily, but he knows, and stops laughing.

“Did you talk to Arafel?”

“I tried, she was at court.”

“So you came here.”

“If I had called, you wouldn’t have picked up.” 

Thranduil nods. Fair enough. Last time they saw each other, he kicked Melissa and her parents, his and Arafel’s adoptive family out of their apartment. Melissa talked to Arafel once since, when she was desperate, but never to Thranduil. 

“Just a dinner? For fun?”

Melissa stiffens, as always it is as if he is staring right through her, extracting every thought, every secret she has ever kept from the world right out of her soul. Normally, she’s a slick liar, another acquired survival skill, but she’s never been able to lie to either Thranduil or Arafel, and she’s fidgeting. 

Thranduil, having gathered what he needed lets her off the hook, “Alright. I’ll talk to Arafel. She’ll let you know.”

Melissa barely manages a smile and a thank you before running out of the office as quickly as she deems unsuspicious. Thranduil is exceedingly suspicious. And thoroughly distracted. It’s not even 4 pm and his evening’s likely screwed, most probably the night as well, but he can’t focus on work any more. He’ll work on the fucking weekend if he has to, it might be good for him for a change, he thinks biting down hard as the strap of his bag cuts into his shoulder, chest and back. 

As he’s leaving the lab, one of his students stops him to discuss some results and future experiments. Thranduil leans his head on his shoulder as he often does when thinking, which fully exposes the nasty whip mark superimposed over the large purple bruise on his neck barely hidden by the collar of his shirt. It does not go unnoticed. 

“Uh, man, who did that to you?” 

“Not who. What. Horse riding accident. A branch”, slides off his tongue before he’s thought about it. He doesn’t even know why he lied. The people in his lab are neither stupid nor oblivious. And even though he tries to keep the cuts and bruises under the neckline and above his wrists, there have been enough exceptions to become the norm. The kids are not intrusive, they only ask when they are actually worried. So he adds, “It’s fine, looks worse than it is.” 

“Yea, ok. Take care of yourself.” A branch that cuts an inch deep and bites. Fuck, one day somebody’ll kill him. Not that Ian will ever say any of that. They all just wish that Thranduil would be careful with… well, whatever it is that he does. 

Thranduil rolls his eyes, laughs, “See you tomorrow Ian.”

Not until he’s in his car, two quick lines making their way to his brain, does he begin digging through the images he picked up from Melissa’s thoughts. But among the jumble of inconsequential and not so inconsequential shit Melissa wants, he can’t extract the thing she presently wants from them. 

He arrives to the empty apartment, throws his bag into an armchair, takes off his blazer, gets a drink of water then, taking his hair out of its ponytail and letting it fall over the armrest, stretches on the sofa remote control in hand. He flips the television on, doesn’t bother flipping the channels. They watch two, National Geographic and HBO, exceptionally Showtime, and there’s nothing on HBO or Showtime at 4:30 in the afternoon. But there are Aurora lights on National Geographic. Almost better than drugs. He doesn’t feel like killing shit any more.

Arafel comes home also early, near 6, to find the television on, Aurora replaced by lions, and Thranduil asleep. She smiles to herself, wildlife, of course. Thranduil will watch these shows on repeat for hours. She prefers the “creatures”, as humans like to call them, vampires, aliens, their own kind, even witches, wizards, especially on the rare occasion that they’re winning or at least not getting slaughtered. 

She takes her suit jacket off, leaves it on the hanger by the door, drops her bag and shoes off by the door as well and moves to walk past the sofa into the kitchen. Thranduil grabs her by the wrist.

“Good morning, sunshine”, Arafel turns to stand over him. He takes her other wrist and pulls her down until she is laying on top of him. 

“T, I’m thirsty, let me go.”

“Not until you hear this. You’ll want something other than water.”

Arafel rises her eyebrows.

“Melissa showed up in my office.”

Arafel puts a finger to his lips, “Stop.” Thranduil laughs, releasing his grip on her to let her get up. She disappears into the back of the apartment, returns momentarily, out of her suit and in a pair of leggings and a tank top, then walks to the kitchen. She returns with a bottle of wine, two glasses and a bag of coke with requisite paraphernalia. Then she settles back on top of her brother, putting the small silver mirror on his chest and proceeding to spread thin lines on the surface. Thranduil is following her every movement with eyes part amusement, part hunger. 

Arafel inhales a line, looks at her brother, “You were saying…”

Thranduil takes the straw out of her hand, clears the next line, “She wants to meet us for dinner…”, Arafel reaches for the straw, he yanks it out of her reach and inhales another line, “… with her fiancé”. He hands her the straw. Arafel is so stunned that she ignores the remaining line for a full ten seconds. 

“What did you say?” She is putting the mirror on the floor, and uncorking the wine bottle.

“That I would talk to you.”

“Glass?”

“Not unless you insist on being civilized, and we hire a maid to do the dishes”. Arafel hands him the bottle, glasses forsaken. Thranduil hadn’t realized that he was thirsty until he starts drinking, and then he can’t stop. He goes through nearly half the bottle before he hands it to Arafel, who really is thirsty and almost finishes it. 

“Well…” Arafel is looking at the just about empty bottle, “Are we going? What does she want?”

“What does she not want. I don’t know. It’s a mess in her head.”

“Where? When?”

“I said you’d call her.”

Arafel gives him the middle finger. He grabs her by the hips and slides her pelvis firmly against his, then lifts her off of him and sits her next to him as he is himself sitting up, finishing the wine and reaching for the coke bag. When he speaks, his voice is darker. “Call the little bitch and be quick, I need you before we go.”

8,000 years and it’s still the same between them. Throw a spark, start a wildfire, and in it they will burn. 

Arafel dials Melissa’s number and gets an answer on the first ring. Melissa’s voice is shaking. Arafelt cuts through the pleasantries and tells her 9 o’clock and the place, not leaving this entirely out of their control. Thranduil hears Melissa excited squeak from where he’s sitting, Arafel flinches holding the phone away from her ear. “See you at 9”, she hangs up with Melissa still chattering. Roll her eyes, throws the phone into the armchair opposite and turns her attention to her brother. Thranduil doesn’t give her a chance to wonder what he’s thinking. He brings another line to her nose then feeds her some lose powder off his fingers. Then he pushes two fingers down her throat, his other hand on the back of her neck, forcing her to her knees in front of him. 

She loves this about him. He doesn’t ask for permission. He takes what he wants, risking rejection, risking a fight, risking everything. Every time. Because Arafel is unpredictable too. Most often she’ll let him have his way with her, without being exactly coy but without resisting, but sometimes she’ll fight him. If she fights him, he won’t stop, he’ll hurt her, and she’ll push him further. Hell if she knows why. Because she likes it? Because he does? Because they can? 

She runs her hands along his inner thighs, looking up into his eyes. Thranduil is staring back at her, a half-smile playing upon his lips. He is no longer forcing his fingers down her throat, she is. He uses his other hand to unbutton his jeans; he doesn’t wear anything underneath, as usual. His cock rests against his lower abdomen, heavy, almost fully erect, veins popping. And half-healed lash marks clearly visible. 

Arafel removes his fingers out of her mouth, bends lower and without breaking eye contact with him, licks the underside of his cock, along the entire length, from the base to the tip using the entire surface of her tongue but gently, experimentally. She has no idea how much this will hurt, or how much he wants it to. Thranduil opens his mouth in a soundless sigh but doesn’t otherwise react. Arafel, repeats the motion, this time more firmly, and gets a similar reaction. So she closes her lips over him and takes his entire length into her mouth, tip to base, and back up, her eyes never leaving his. This is what he likes, his cock all the way down her throat. He is completely hard now. She moves slowly and doesn’t suck hard at first, and his face is calm although the smile is gone, replaced by clenched teeth and something like resolution in his eyes. When she increases pressure, he yanks her by the hair and hisses, but only for a moment, then releases her. She pauses nevertheless. He tells her to continue. When she does, he stiffens, but he does not yank her head again, within moments she tastes his silvery pre-cum. She can visualize it perfectly, leaking from the tip coating her mouth, feels it sliding down her throat. 

She puts her hands on his hips, and readjusts on the floor, her underwear sticky, wet. “Harder”, he breathes. She complies. The half-formed scar tears somewhere; she tastes blood. It paints her lips red. It makes her breathe faster. He watches, puts his hands on the sides of her head and tells her to continue. Arafel digs her nails into his hips to stop her teeth from ripping into him. He thrusts his hips upwards forcing his cock deeper into her throat; his hands keep her head in place. And he’s not trying to contain the mix of curses and moans flying from his lips as he fucks her mouth, fucks her throat, ripping himself open anew. Thranduil is split in two by pain and pleasure and made whole again by it. Arafel lets go of his hips, holds her head and neck as still as she can, keeps her throat open for him, her mouth the shape that he likes. He might love the way she looks between his thighs, but she loves the way he feels filling her throat. 

Thranduil throws his head back and buries hers at the base of his cock as he explodes against the back of her throat. Her brother’s releases are voluminous, she feels the familiar warmth spreading down her esophagus all the way to her stomach. She feels the rhythmic spasms of his cock, delivering subsequent smaller bursts. She’s swallows all of it, sucks him dry, licks him clean of his semen and of the blood. And wants to crawl out of her skin. Her body is tight as a strung bow. 

Still out of it but at least coherent, Thranduil, lifts her up by her arms, brings her up into his lap facing him, one hand on the back of her neck, the other on her waist, fingertips digging into the flesh. He licks her blood-stained lips, parts them using his tongue. He is not gentle, but neither is she. The kiss is all teeth and bruises. When it breaks, he forces her head over his shoulder and uses both hands to rip both her leggings and underwear down the middle in the back. When she turns to protest, he grabs her by the neck again, digging his fingers into her skin and the cut. She would cuss him out but she can’t get the words out because he has her trachea pressed against his collarbone making it difficult to breathe and impossible to talk. It’s probably not accidental. He slips his fingers into her. Three at once, deep, hitting her G-spot instantly. And he doesn’t wait. He holds her still and fucks her hard and fast. When she manages to turn her head a fraction, she bites into his neck. He hisses but doesn’t pull away. Instead he releases her neck, pulls his fingers out of her, picks her up and, hands on the bones of her hips, slams her all the way down on his newly erect and ready cock. Arafel lets go of his neck, arches her back, mouth glistening with blood and wide open in a silent scream.

He doesn’t need to ask if he’s hurting her. There are bruises in the shape of his fingers and bones starting to form on her neck and there’s blood on his hands. 

It takes no more than five hard, deep thrusts of his hips, which Arafel, gripping tightly onto his wrists, meets with her own, for him to feel her muscles contract around him, her fingers locking him in a death grip. He stills, letting her ride him to completion at her own pace. His sister’s bone-breaking, silent orgasms, like this one, when she grinds against him so close that she bruises both their pelvic bones, unhinge Thranduil. His body is screaming for a violent release only Arafel can give him, but his mind wants to hold her close and never let anyone hurt her.

He holds her against his chest, not a breath of air between them, whispering sweet nonsense to her as she trembles through the last of her orgasm, as she relaxes against him, as she tells him not to stop. He tells her he loves her as he fucks her so hard their bones collide, as he feels her clench her teeth, hold her breath, each trust part pleasure part agony. He repeats it through tears as he’s spilling his seed deep inside her. 

“I love you too”, Arafel whispers against his chest, holding onto him for dear life.


	6. The Fallen

Some thirty minutes later, Thranduil, carrying Arafel in his arms, her legs and arms wrapped around him and his cock still hard inside her, gets up to retrieve another bottle of wine, answering her quizzical look with, “I am not going to this fucking dinner anywhere close to sober”. The rest, that if he goes flying on faery dust alone, there’ll be trouble, is unsaid but implied. 

Arafel laughs. It’s true, especially when they’re together. Although sober, they’re probably worse, having no tolerance whatsoever for anyone but each other. Alcohol and opiates dull their edges, and it goes easier for everybody. 

So they swallow a few oxycodones each and spend the next hour slowly drinking, lazily grinding against each other, Arafel still in his lap, Thranduil still inside her, his cock leaking, both of them feeling it but neither reaching full orgasm. They can spend hours like this, virtually silent, buried deep into each other’s bodies and thoughts as they slip into the distance, the world becoming vaguer, less solid, less jarring. 

At half past eight, they finally move to get dressed. Skinny jeans, skin tight, the lightest of grey, loose and long white long sleeve T-shirts, white leather jackets the warn-out, rough cut in stark contrast with the innocence of the color and chunky black platform ankle boots, Thranduil’s heels only slightly shorter than Arafels. He also puts on black eyeliner, not as dramatic as he often does, but not subtle either, and the obligatory mascara. Arafel, standing behind him fixing her hair in the mirror, kisses his cheek. “Hair up or down?”, he asks running his fingers through it in substitute for a comb. 

“Up.”

He gathers his hair up in a high ponytail, and brother and sister lean in, their faces touching cheek to cheek. Looking into the mirror, for a second, they are serious, their faces almost identical like this, their perfect pale faces… trailing off into the chaos of purples, blues, yellows and razorblade red that are their necks. Then they laugh like two hyenas, at the image in the mirror and all the images carried in their memories, “Fuck T, we’re drunk.” 

“Sufficiently. For now. Let’s go.” They’re actually happy, if not happy amused. 

The taxi drops them off in front of the restaurant at exactly 9:05. Arafel spots Melissa and the fiancé as she’s exiting the vehicle and intertwines her arm with her brother’s as they approach. Formal greetings, introductions and pleasantries are exchanged and the four of them are quickly seated at the reserved table in the darker, quieter part of the place, per Arafel’s request. 

Halting conversation drags on throughout dinner. Mostly it’s Melissa and her fiancé talking, telling stories of their joined adventures which they either consider entertaining or think Thranduil and Arafel might. Mostly they are the only ones laughing. If asked, Thranduil and Arafel couldn’t recall as much as the punch line of a single anecdote, their minds traveling through some other tales. But they nod and grin often and politely enough. Of course they don’t touch the food. Of course they empty a bottle of wine and order another within the first half hour. Isaac, the fiancé, pretends not to notice. Melissa, on the other hand does and can’t hide her disapproval. She’s one part furious that they’d show up high, or drunk, and that they’d not even try to pretend to be normal, one part grateful that they showed up at all, and above all fuming that she can’t say what she thinks because, as usual, she needs them. Still, while either blatantly rude and not paying attention or genuinely out of it or both, they are generally extraordinarily pleasant, worryingly so.

So she tries direct conversation, but the question comes out all wrong, comes out as what it is, barely veiled judgment. “So where are you living now?”

“Still the same place,” Thranduil takes the bait, a note of amusement, which Melissa misses, in his voice. 

“The one bedroom.” Melissa emphasizes the _one_ bedroom, regretting the words the moment they leave her mouth.

Because Thranduil is never _that_ drunk, “Yes, sister dearest, with the _**one**_ bed.”

Neither is Arafel, who has until now been sitting back in her chair basically completely disinterested in the dining experience but is now sitting straight backed, intertwining her fingers with her brother’s on the table, and her smile is all teeth, “Does that answer the question that’s really burning your tongue, sister?”

Melissa blanches, fumbles with her napkin, “I have to go use the restroom. Excuse me”, and practically runs away from the table. 

“Of course, honey”, Isaac is stunned but retains gentlemanly composure. Thranduil and Arafel roll their eyes. 

But when Mellissa is out of the room, he turns to Thranduil and Arafel and asks, politely but firmly, “Ok… would either of you explain to me what’s going on here?”

Thranduil grins arching an eyebrow, then leans into the table, “It’s like this…” “Isaac”, Arafel supplies. The last time Thranduil bothered to register someone’s name, he was a king. 

“Isaac”, he continues, “our dear sister is embarrassed by the way we live our lives. We are here tonight because you two need something from us. Maybe it’s money, maybe Melissa needs a bridesmaid, or maybe our parents hate you but she calculates that they hate us more and perhaps we could remind them of it. Whatever the fuck it is”, he pauses, deliberately, his mouth smiling but his eyes burning through the man, waiting for color to drain completely from Isaac’s face, which it does, “I wish you would spit it out, so we can write the check, play Devils, or dress up in satin and lace, whichever you need, and be done with it.”

As Isaac, ghost white, but regaining his capacity to speak impressively quickly, which Thranduil admires, begins to form a replay, Melissa returns.

Seeing her fiance’s face, she hisses at Thranduil before she’s even properly seated, “What did you do to him?” Then turns to Arafel and glares at her. 

Thranduil and Arafel just lean back in their chairs, bring their wine glasses to their lips in one graceful coordinated movement, which looks more choreographed than real, and drink, saying nothing. Isaac recovers, turns to Melissa and bewildered, surprised, in a voice half whisper states, “They’ll do it, hun, he said they’ll do it.”

“You ASKED them?”, this time Melissa does shout, then turns around nervously clamping her hands over her mouth, wondering who has heard her. 

“No, no, I didn’t get the chance…”, Isaac hastens to explain. “I was going to wait for you of course, I would never presume. They are your family…” he trails off, not knowing what more to say. Arafel and Thranduil roll their eyes, call the waiter over to bring another bottle of wine, clearly bored. Minutes pass… lost to groveling, endless, inconsequential apologies running around in circles. They seem like hours, seems like years to Thranduil and Arafel. Seem like slow dying. 

Finally, irritated, Arafel interrupts, “You’re easier to read than a book, Melissa. We guessed, although not the details. So out with it. What exactly do you want?”

Melissa’s voice trembles, she can’t look at Arafel when she replies, “Well, you know my apartment, it’s so old, and Isaac would be moving in after the wedding of course, so we would like to renovate it a little…”

“Melissa, I am not a priest. This is not a confession. I am asking you what you want from us not to tell me your life story,” Arafel is out of patience. Thranduil pours a full glass of whine, hands it to Melissa and point blank orders her to drink. Melissa’s too scared to refuse. When she’s finished, he pours her another, and hands it to her again, “Now, please start talking”.

“36,000 dollars for…” 

Arafel pulls out a checkbook, “I don’t care what it’s for”, and doesn’t care about the hurt written all over Melissa’s face either as she hands her the check. “Next?”

Melissa manages to keep the tears at bay, “Mom and dad hate Isaac.” 

Thranduil raises his eyebrows, “Why?” 

“Because he’s a high school teacher, not a medical school professor, or a lawyer, like you”. 

Thranduil and Arafel roar with laughter, and can’t stop. Isaac can’t decide whether to be offended or not, but then starts laughing as well. When he can catch his breath, Thranduil starts, “Also not… what was it… deranged freaks, whore, sister-fucker, junkie wastes of air…”, all epitaphs their parents had hurled at them, among others, since they were 16, when they threw them out of the house while hanging their diplomas on the walls and parading holograms of them in front of their acquaintances. They were trophy children. They filled that house like ghosts. Melissa knew that well. She’d lived with the perfect effigies of her older siblings, their photographs enshrined next to their achievements like holy icons, because the flesh and blood Arafel and Thranduil were never spoken off without a curse and never again seen within those walls. Isaac doesn’t understand anything, but he’s stopped laughing. 

“Don’t worry, Isaac, give us fifteen minutes with mom and dad, and they will adore you”, Thranduil can barely speak still laughing. 

“You will see them then?”, Melissa chances, gulping the rest of her wine.

Arafel finishes her own, “Sure”.

Melissa pours them both another, motions the waiter to keep bringing more, “They’re coming to town tomorrow.”

Thranduil looks at Arafel, both of them instantly serious, both of them thinking, “You have to be fucking kidding me”. Out loud Arafel’s only commentary is a too calm, “Call Skip tonight”, directed at her brother. 

Upon Melissa’s inquiry into who Skip might be, Thranduil and Arafel answer in unison, “Our candy dealer”. Melissa, to her credit, or the wine’s, nods, for the first time withholding judgment. 

“Anything else?”, Thranduil thinks he’s ready for anything.

“One last thing…”, Melissa bites her lip before looking at him, “Come to the wedding.”

“What?”, Thranduil is not ready.

“Why would you want _us_ at your wedding?”, Arafel is incredulous. 

“I don’t.” _In vino veritas._ Melissa doesn’t even try evoking some familial connection or dormant emotions which they all know are not there. “But it will be too odd if you’re not there. Isaac’s family is very traditional. They would not understand if you were not there.”

“So? Tell them you’re an only child. For fuck’s sake, Melissa! Who will contradict you? Our parents?!”, Thranduil doesn’t think he’s ever heard stupider reasoning. “Isaac??”

“We’ve already told my family about you”, Isaac informs them. 

“Oh, you have to be fucking joking, Melissa”, Thranduil sits back, defeated, wine glass in his hand. Arafel’s already sitting back, her arms crossed over her chest shaking her head, the absurdity of the request and the situation requiring no commentary. 

“Again, you must pardon me, but what is the big deal? I don’t understand”, Isaac, who despite Melissa’s prep talk is coming to like her siblings, eccentric as they may be, is clearly uncomfortable with the unexpected issue this, in his mind, the least problematic, of their requests is creating.

“No, Isaac, you don’t understand”, Thranduil looks at him, and the look is full of something Isaac can’t read, but it looks remarkably like sadness. Isaac has an urge to hold this man, this beautiful man’s hands in his, to run his hands over his sharp cheekbones, to take the melancholy away. He doesn’t move. 

“Ok, whatever, we’ll be there”, Arafel announces cutting through the tense silence.

Thranduil turns, stares her in the eyes, grabs her by the wrist, and pulls her away from the table after him in less time than it takes Melissa and Isaac to process what Arafel had actually said, tossing over his houlder, “We’ll be back in a sec”. Arafel follows him into the women’s restroom where he locks them into a stall, and pins her against the door. “Are you sure about this?” “Yes.” With their bodies pressed firmly against each other, it seems possible to survive anything. Thranduil licks his sister’s lips, dips his fingertip into a bag of coke he brought with him, then smears the powder along her lips. She sucks the leftover from his fingertip. When she tries to lick her lips, he bites her bottom lip, hard, draws blood, then licks her lips clean, slips his tongue into her mouth, cocaine, blood and each other’s saliva mixing in their mouths, instantly intoxicating, making them both high. They kiss deep, long, their tongues everywhere, their teeth grazing lips and tongues, puncturing flesh. Thranduil occasionally spreads more coke onto their lips and tongues, the drug quickly absorbing through the porous membranes of their mouths, hitting their brains hard and fast. Between all the wine, oxys, coke and blood, it’s a chemical storm in their brains. Time stretches and contracts, the world is far away and too close, in living color. 

The last of it goes up their noses before they separate, forcefully, holding each other at arms length despite their bodies screaming to be close, to be one, their skin burning for touch, their groins aching. 

Fifteen minutes passes before they’re back at the table, now thoroughly fucked up, finding their dinner partners properly, delightfully drunk. Thranduil smiles thinking that the night might not be a total waste yet. 

Melissa, very much emboldened by the wine starts with, “Oh god, you are totally wasted.” She’s slurring the words slightly.

“Cheers then”, Thranduil takes a wine glass knocks it against Melissa’s and both of them drain the contents. Arafel ignores the comment, but seizes on the train of thought, “Speaking of, do not expect us to be any less fucked up at this wedding.” Her brother concurs by nodding, “In fact, expect us to be annihilated within an inch of remembering our names.”

“Ok, deal. Just… can you…”, still she cannot bring herself to say the words, so Arafel finishes the question for her, “behave like normal people in polite society?” Thranduil answers, “Yes, sister, we can.” He pauses, considers leaving it at that, but then he continues, his features turning to stone, statue-like, the frozen king only Arafel remembers, “But I wish that one day you, not for me or for Arafel, but only for yourself, are able to think of us without shame. It would free you.” He’s neither angry, nor hurt. There is neither emotion nor malice underneath his words. And he’s much too used to being used as a prop in human dramas to care. He just occasionally, very occasionally, comes to feel sad for people who live within the iron walls of secrets. If he lets it, he can still feel his close around him. 

Melissa doesn’t say anything. She’s turned a shade of red, but she doesn’t begin to comprehend what he’s just told her. Isaac has had just enough wine to think about asking questions again. But before the question, which he takes the time to carefully formulate, crosses his lips, Thranduil spares him the agony. 

He looks at Melissa and asks, “May I tell him now?”

Melissa just nods, continuing to stare at the table. Arafel closes her eyes, her hand in her brother’s. 

“The big family secret, Isaac, is that Arafel and I sleep together.”

At first Isaac doesn’t translate the meaning of “sleep together”. Then his expression begins to change as the revelation hits, his eyes widen, mouth slackens, “Oh… shit… you two…oh fuck…” 

“That’s right, we fuck”, Thranduil supplies, helpfully. Arafel leans back, head cocked slightly to the side, observing the proceedings with vague interest. And equal disinterest. She couldn’t care less what Isaac, Melissa or anyone else other than her brother think about her and her brother. For the sake of each other, they once lied to their only son, then they let him go. These fucking people, all of these fucking people were nobody and nothing in comparison. 

In the pause, in the still, Thranduil also leans back in his chair, still holding onto his sister’s hand. Arafel puts her head onto his shoulder, her free hand onto his thigh. 

“So, do you… do you… I mean… Are you like… married?” Isaac corrects himself immediately, “Stupid question, of course not, you can’t be.” But not before his words cut through both Thranduil and Arafel with the blade of millennia. “We were. We are”, Thranduil’s thoughts are clear in Arafels mind. “Until the world ends”, her thoughts echo back to him. This is all it ever takes, an unpredictable sentence, or a certain angle at which light hits a tree, and a rip in time opens up for them, and they’re falling… falling. Tumbling back through slideshows of time folding back onto themselves, the weight of all of their lives crushing their bones. 

Swimming back up to the surface of the 21st century seems accidental. Thousands of years rewound in a flash leave scars in the shape of each other’s fingernails in their palms and their knuckles white. Melissa is explaining to Isaac how they were thrown out of the house at sixteen after somebody told their parents about them making out. Isaac is asking if it was true, he’s probably been asking for some time. 

“Does it matter?”, Thranduil replies. He answers more to shake of the past of himself than anything. “We didn’t deny it so it became the truth. The truth is that nobody saw us making out. They saw us kiss, on a dare and for money. The truth is we could have pressed our lips together in an innocent peck and taken the money. The truth is we didn’t. The truth is our tongues were in each other’s mouth, out teeth clashing, biting, licking and swallowing each other’s blood, and we didn’t stop until somebody pulled us apart and there was almost 2,000 dollars under our feet.” Thranduil pauses, remembering. 

“And a room full of other people making out”, Arafel adds. 

“The truth is we had been sleeping together since we were thirteen, but we were careful. Nobody knew.” This is what he says. What he does not say is the iceberg under the waterline. At thirteen the nightmares began. 

Thranduil and Arafel had been unusual children, aloof, anti-social, emotionally cold and unresponsive, almost exclusively interested in the flora and fauna and becoming reticent to downright hostile if company of other children was forced upon them. But they hit, or rather exceeded, all developmental milestones, walking before they were brought home from the orphanage, reading by the age of four, and no psychological evaluation could show anything at all amiss. In fact as they entered their early teenage years, they seemed to became more “normal”. They were still essentially antisocial and very close, but nobody considered this very strange for twins, more so adopted twins in a household of super rich parents in which a biological child had just been born. Also, they had a circle of friends, or so it seemed. To Arafel and Thrandul it was always clear that they were only people who wanted or needed something from them, but the relationship was mutually beneficial, they wanted and needed things as well. 

They were strange children, but overall, as things were, nothing prepared them for the series of events that began unfolding in their thirteenth year. It began with nightmares. Thranduil was being burned by dragon fire. Arafel was watching. Over and over again, night after night. The dream made no sense, it was anchored to nothing they recognized. But they woke up screaming. Eventually, with black circles under their eyes and half-delirious from lack of sleep, they talked about the dreams. After that, more often than not, they fell asleep holding each other, trying to stay awake. The dreams still came, but it was better waking up screaming in your twin’s arms than alone. Understanding each other’s torment, they became fiercely protective of each other. Their relationship changing into what it is today came completely naturally to them. The first time they kissed and didn’t stop until they couldn’t breathe, the first time Arafel bit her brother hard enough to draw blood and both of them wanted more, the first time he, instead of grinding against her until he spilled across her belly, held her hips in place and pressed the head of his erection against the entrance of her vagina, and she wrapped her legs around his back and nodded, and when he said it would hurt told him not to hold back, they did it all as their bodies led them, instinctively. Their minds followed, without resistance, and without anguish, as easily as breathing. 

Soon other dreams followed. Then waking visions. Out scraps a coherent narrative began emerging. At first, it was like a story one would read in a book, distant and unreal. But over the next several months, the story slowly seeped under their skin, into their bones, and took on the quality of memory. Both gradually and all at once, Thranduil and Arafel remembered being Thranduil and Arafel. As if their bodies merged with the reincarnated spirits of themselves, they were no longer thirteen year old children, they were 8,000 year old king and queen of the Eldar. And over the next year, they remembered everything. 

Consequently, naturally, their already precarious relationship with the world and the people around them began disintegrating. The relationship with their parents went from carefully orchestrated pretense of normality to open war with a battle line drawn down the middle of the house which neither side crossed, with Melissa caught on the cracked, unstable ice in between, never knowing which piece was safe to step on. Thranduil and Arafel still indulged Melissa because they understood the consequences of living on shifting ice surrounded by a frozen sea. They still went to school and somehow, miraculously, exceled in their studies, but they rarely came home. Nobody knew what they did and whom they hang around with, but, always slim, they were now skeletal with haunted sunken eyes rimmed in perpetual black circles. 

The school took notice and called their parents, who didn't. The parents, once bothered, yelled and screamed, and failing that pleaded. Thranduil and Arafel sat and stared back at them wordlessly with blank expressions upon their faces. Psychologists shook their heads, declared the issue to be a typical teenage rebellion phase, and advised that since they were doing well in school, it would be best to just let them be. 

So, they were left alone. And it was what they needed. They maintained the bare minimum of interaction with the human society and spent the rest of their time in the nearby forest. It gave them space and time to experiment with this century’s drugs and figure out how to manage the nightmares. And it gave them a place to be with each other, free from human morality and judgment, a thing they needed then, in those first several years when they weren’t sure of anything. Perhaps most importantly, it calmed them. It made them feel stable, substantial, like they were actually made of flesh and bone. Because in those early years the world felt very unstable outside and inside them and they always felt like dust, here one minute, easily gone the next. No matter how many times they’d lived through it, the initial onslaught of the return of memory was as disorienting as it was nearly paralyzing. They needed time. If asked to explain what exactly they needed time for, Arafel and Thranduil would say that they needed time to grieve. A grief so much more complicated than what a human can feel, weighted by too much time and too many things which should be whole irreparably severed. The feeling also always passed. Two years later, at sixteen, they were ready. 

“After they kicked us out, we didn’t care who knew. Everybody knew. Interestingly, people paid to watch us together, and to fuck us. A lot. “Twincest”, it turns out, pays well in the 21st century. It paid for rent, for school, for drugs. Daddy was right after all, we were whores. And we were great at it.”

With that Thranduil gets up, extends his hand to Arafel, who takes it gracefully and rising from her chair says, “Well, it’s been a pleasure, but we must be going.”

Melissa and Isaac stumble to their feet as well, Melissa grabs for Arafel’s hand, “You will go see mom and dad tomorrow?”

“Yes, yes”, Arafel extracts her hand, “Goodnight.” 

“Goodnight! Thank you!”, Melissa’s and Isaac’s voices echo after them. 

Thranduil doesn’t bother looking back, or replaying.

Outside, a taxi is waiting for them, Thranduil must have called it, Arafel is pleased. Once inside, they both breathe deeply, happy to be alone. He lays his head in her lap, on the side, looking forward, “I can’t believe we’re going to a fucking wedding. “

Arafel strokes his hair. “Don’t think about it. There may not even be a wedding, who knows.” Thranduil laughs, “Is that a jinx?” Arafel laughs.

“Do you feel like going home?”, he adds after several quiet minutes pass.

“No.” 

He directs the driver to abandon the original destination and drive them around the city instead, then settles back into Arafels lap, his arm curled around her thigh. 

She leans her head back against the seat, her fingers combing through his hair. It has begun raining. 

Long minutes, closing in on an hour pass in silence. 

“Do you think we made a mistake?”

Arafel doesn’t need clarification. “For us we did”. 

He nods not turning to look at her, “But for him we did not.”

When the word arrived that every one of their race had to decide the course of the remainder of their lives, Legolas was already in Valinor. Of his mother he remembered little and knew less, probably for the better. Thranduil and his son had parted on dubious terms over a century before, but had not been close since Legolas was a youth. In fact, Legolas barely tolerated him. Thranduil neither knew how to be a father, nor had time, nor had honestly tried. He couldn’t look at his son without wanting to tell him the truth he could never tell. Moreover, neither Arafel nor Thranduil wanted a child; they never should have been parents. They knew that. They had a child simply to protect the Greenwood throne, a cosmic joke in the end. And Legolas suffered mightily as a result. He would suffer no more on their account. It was the deciding factor in their resolution to forsake the Undying Lands, their immortal lives and the company of most of their kin. Legolas was happy without them, and they would let him go. Forever. On their last night together, Elrond called Thranduil something along the lines of an insufferable, obstinate idiot of whom nothing else could be expected. Thranduil closed his eyes, kissed him on the forehead, and asked him to look after his son. 

They are both lost in the same thoughts. Thranduil recites, slow and low and Arafel joins him. Long pauses mark the end of each sentence.

“So crawl until the sun goes down.  
I'll never wear your broken crown.  
I took the road and I fucked it all away.  
In that twilight, our choices sealed our fate.”

They are quiet for a long time again. Then Arafel speaks, “I don’t know, T, I don’t think we were born to be happy. I think we were born for a purpose.”

“That purpose ended thousands of years ago. We are impostors in a world in which we are no longer relevant”, he tilts his head to look at her.

“In a world which doesn’t want us, certainly. But does it not need us? We are stuck here. There are others like us, although not many. The rest of us who remained here have long ago fused with the very fabric of the Earth. Why would they have given us this as a choice if there wasn’t a reason for it?”

“To cull the worthy from the forsaken without doing it themselves. Think. Which ones of us were less likely to chose Valinor? The ones who have never been there, those of us whom they have always called The Fallen.”

“The Fallen… There’s a difference between an accident of stumbling bat blindness, contemplated in mournful songs, regrettable madness of confused crossroads, and impotent fury of the unrequited, and the silent. And mistaken parabolas, misread allegories, riddled non-riddles. Inversions in negatives and cinematographic freeze-frames. Versus a flight, on not exactly faery wings, inverted towards the sky, in immaculate reflection. And unforgivable smiles, lacking apology, regret, or redemption. Illuminated by the moon's silver strings, falling on shattered parking lot glass, to mesmerize, to bind a moment of comprehension. And reflect, unknowing, the judgment attempted, and sometimes delivered. The difference is spoken in a word - Deliberate.” 

The last time Thranduil has seen Arafel’s eyes shine like this, lit by an otherworldly fire, he’d give his immortal life to forget. He sits in her lap, his legs folded under him framing hers, he takes her hands into his, all of his movements automatic, unconscious, to keep her close to him, anchored here, to this world, to him. 

He asks her, “What then are we here for still?”

“The same thing we have always been here for, T”, her eyes focus on his face again, to his relief no longer floating in space, “To hold back the decay. Black Wizards. Black smoke. There is no difference.”

“And no magic rings, as always.” Once Thranduil starts laughing he can’t stop. It starts full of irony, sadistic and dark, but then it turns honest, light, like silver moonlight breaking through dark clouds. Arafel hasn’t heard him laugh like that in an age, and after a while, she’s laughing too. Their foreheads pressed together. 

“Some places we've already fallen”, Arafel whispers against his lips. He bites her bottom lip. She licks the blood from it. “Others we haven't”, she continues, slipping her tongue in between his lips then withdrawing it quickly. “Others we never will.” She takes the rubber band tying his hair out, shakes his hair loose, tangles her fingers into it. He grabs the back of her neck, claiming her mouth in a deep, possessive kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am honestly sorry regarding the super-long pauses between chapters. I still am committed to this story, (un)fortunately life happens in between. Thank you for your patience.


	7. You will always be a whore (Room 544)

Arafel pulls him by the hair so that his neck is bared to her, licks a slow path from his collar bone to his ear, pauses a moment then bites into his neck right through the still bruised flesh and unhealed scars. Thranduil emits a silent scream and grinds himself into her pelvic bones, hard. She drinks through the newly torn skin, her body and mind igniting. He lets her get her fill then pulls her mouth to his, licks his blood of her lips, off her tongue, then guides her back to his neck. As she laps at the profusely bleeding wound, he whispers in her ear, “You know I love you with my blood on your lips”. No more than she loves it in her mouth. She’s drowning in it, in him. And he, he’s drunk on the image in his mind and high on the pain which cuts him like a razorblade. 

When she briefly opens her eyes, Arafel catches a worried look on the face of their driver in the rearview mirror, and ignores it. If he becomes concerned enough, he’ll start yelling. Which he does, when Thranduil pushes her down horizontal on the back seat flipping her onto her stomach in one quick movement. The driver’s words follow quickly, “No sex! No sex!” 

Thranduil digs into his pocket, comes up with a $100 bill, hands it to the driver and smiles so that the man can see him, “We won’t leave a mess, I promise. And you can watch as long as you don’t crash.” 

The driver examines the bill, decides it’s real, looks back with a grin, “Yes, boss. It’s all good.” The entire exchange is over in under a minute.

Thranduil gives him a thumps up, then puts him out of his mind. 

He pulls his sister’s trousers half way down her thighs her legs pressed together by the skin-tight jeans and releases his now fully erect and throbbing cock from the confines of his own equally tight jeans. He uses one hand to spread her buttocks apart, felling how very wet she is, and the other to guide himself inside her. Arafel helps by raising her ass to meet him. He slips fully inside her easily and wraps an arm around her abdomen to keep her close to him. His other arm is across her chest, in between her breasts, his hand around her neck, applying enough pressure that he’ll probably leave marks but not enough that she can’t breathe. Most of his weight is resting on her, their bodies in full contact. 

Their movements are minimal but efficient. He is so deep inside her that every one of his thrusts brings the tip of his penis to the end of her cervix. It hurts; it tares her open, fragments her, makes her dig her nails into his hips as she pulls him into her. And she loves being so completely owned by him. He couldn’t make her feel more like his possession if he put her in cuffs and tied her in ropes. His words, spoken into her ear between hisses and moans, “Mine… You will always be mine”, emphasize what they both feel. 

“Always”, Arafel replies. She is the quieter of the twins. When her brother reaches climax and floods her cervix with his seed, he screams. The scream ending only when he bites into her shoulder still fucking her, feeling her vaginal walls spasming in response to his release, her body shaking. Still inside her, he sits up, holds her to him sitting in his lap. He kisses her, his lips bloody. Arafel returns the kiss eagerly, whispers to him against his lips to keep fucking her. He slides his hands over her ribs to her hips and holding her still continues to drive into her feeling another orgasm approaching.

Arafel puts her head on his shoulder, her arms bent backwards around his ribs and meeting behind his back. She’s bent like a bow. Thranduil catches the taxi driver sneaking backwards glances and grinning, but his attention’s all for his sister. And when Arafel clenches her muscles again, he pulls her all the way down and explodes inside her for the second time. This time, they remain bound and still for long minutes. When they finally separate, the promise to keep the back seat clean is honored. As Arafel sits and pulls her jeans back up, not a drop of her brother’s semen leaks out of her. And won’t, not this time. 

“Did you enjoy the show?”, Thranduil asks the driver, who, momentarily stunned, nevertheless replies truthfully, “Yes, boss, yes.” 

“Good. Please take us home now.”

As the car takes them through the rainy streets, brother and sister hold each other close and doze off and on, content, the world forgotten. 

When they arrive home, they go directly to bed, leaving their clothes in a pile at the foot of the bed. They fall asleep almost immediately wrapped safely into each other. 

Thranduil wakes up as usual, entangled with his sister. And in the twenty seconds before Arafel wakes, he makes a decision, that bastard who calls himself their father will not lay eyes let alone his filthy hands on her today or ever again. He will go see the piece of shit alone. 

Of course there is no way Arafel will go along with that unless he makes her. So, he doesn’t say anything. She senses that something’s on his mind, even that something’s amiss, but Thranduil’s thousands of years of pretending that everything’s fine can confuse even her enough to not be able to figure out what precisely is the matter. Her brother is moody, understatement. It could be anything, and she, like the rest of the world, will have to wait until he feels like talking. She leaves for work with a feeling of deep unease bordering on worry, but all she can get out of him is a confirmation that he’ll pick her up at 5 o’clock and then they’ll go meet the assholes, aka. parents coming up with some sort of plan on the way.

Thranduil, in the meantime, doesn’t think at all about what he will do. He’s already decided and would rather not think about it. He makes one phone call, to Melissa, ordering her to have their mother out of the hotel room from 5:30 in the afternoon and back, with Isaac in tow, between 6:30 and 7. Melissa has the brains not to ask why, and only asks if it will be very bad. Thranduil laughs, “You do want it to be effective, don’t you?” When Melissa verifies that she does, he whispers, “The worst”. He hangs up, puts the entire thing out of his mind and focuses on his work for the rest of the day.

At 4:30 he calls Arafel. She’s surprised; they don’t call each other at work unless something important happens. He can hear a note of worry in her voice and swallows guilt he could choke on. Because worried Arafel, even hysterical Arafel is better than that fucking monster laying his fucking paws on her. So lies come easily, “Listen, I am going to go see the assholes alone. I have a plan.”

Silence.

When the silence stretches for 3 or 4 minutes, when it becomes clear that Arafel won’t or can’t say anything, Thranduil adds, “I’ll be home by 8:00.” 

Silence.

Finally Arafel’s barely audible “Ok” comes through the line. It feels like ice against his skin. 

If they were in the same room, there would be an argument, which is why he lied this morning. At a distance, Arafel simply agrees. Because she knows him completely. Because the decision’s already been made, the battle already lost. 

So he adds, “Don’t worry, please.” Knowing that she will. And that she will feel guilty because he was doing this for her. 

“See you at 8:00”, she hangs up. 

Thranduil slams his office door shut, takes a bag of coke out of his pocket, empties half of it on his desk, makes six long lines with a ruler, the nearest apt thing he sees and a gift from some pharmaceutical company, and inhales them in rapid succession using a cheep pen which he’s emptied of the ink and taken the caps off. Then he throws the pen against the wall shattering it into pieces. Tosses back three oxys because his head hurts and leans back in the chair waiting for the drugs to hit him, preferably like a thunderbolt. 

Outside, Ian raises his hand to knock on the door then hearing something shatter thinks better of it and walks away. Thranduil doesn’t often lose his temper at work. In fact, usually he’s the definition of cool. However, from the one or two times his people have seen him angry, they’ve learned that nothing is so important that it can’t wait until the next day. 

Arafel launches the phone across her office where by dumb luck it hits her blazer hunging on the back of the door and doesn’t shatter. She laughs. But it’s the kind of mirthless laughter which turns into tears. Arafel cries only when it’s about her brother and only when she sees him walking into some bullshit and can’t stop it. Then she cries for crying about it, because Thranduil, like her, is an adult entitled to making his own decisions. Now angry, she wipes the tears, plasters her bitch face back into place so that anyone looking sees what they expect and at 5:05 walks out of the building. 

For a fraction of a second she contemplates going to the hotel, the devil take Thranduil’s plans and choices, and Melissa too. Then she turns the car in the other direction, away from downtown. 

She drives with music blasting until she arrives at the gates of a heavily guarded mansion in the hills overlooking the city. The armed guards let her through. As do the ones at the front door. She leaves her keys with the valet. On the second floor of the enormous house decorated with a lot of money and a surprising level of taste, the owner of the establishment extracts himself from the company of several whores and two business associates to greet her with wide open arms and a big and honest grin upon his broad, deceptively good-natured, face, “Hey A, sweetheart, long time no see, what you been up to?”

Arafel smiles, genuinely. She gives him a kiss on the cheek and lets him fold her into his big, heavily muscled arms, “Work, D, work. How you been?” 

D lets her go, steps back and circles her assessing her like a filly he’s thinking about purchasing and nodding his approval. Arafel, in a tight fitting light beige skirt which hits right above her knees, matching six inch heels and a fitted white blouse purposefully unbuttoned to show of just the top of her cleavage, doesn’t move and doesn’t flinch. “So… What brings you here today?”, he asks standing in front of her placing his hands on her hips. 

“You know what brings me here”, Arafel answers looking directly into his eyes but from under her eyelashes, her voice honey. 

D rubs his chin, smiles, “Yea, yea, just kidding with you…”, talks over his shoulder, “J, go on get some of the good shit for my girl here.” 

Arafel smiles, “Thanks D.”

“You know that’ll cost you, right?”

Arafel begins unbuttoning her shirt.

The worn out phrase, “It’s complicated” nevertheless most accurately describes Arafel’s and Thranduil’s relationship with D’Angelo, known to most people as simply “D”. They’ve known each other for a very long time. When the twins ended up homeless and were selling their bodies for a night in a cheep motel and dirty drugs cut with anything from baking soda to rat poison, when they took naps on park benches or didn’t sleep for days, D’Angelo, some ten years older then them, and already relatively high up the chain in the local drug enterprise, picked them up off the street. He gave them a place to live inside a house only marginally less grand than that from which they had been kicked out, which could not be compared to his present day palace. He provided them with clean drugs but never gave them enough of anything to become full-blown addicts. He taught them how to walk the tightrope between daily or near daily drug use and hopeless addiction which ruled ones entire existence. In return, they became his whores for hire. He hired them out to select, high-paying individuals, couples, and parties, usually together, very rarely individually. He always sent body guards with them, sometimes he even went himself. He charged extravagant rates for them and let them keep half the money. He probably saved their lives. He probably sealed their coffins. He kept them safe. He also gave them everything they needed to survive in the gutters for the rest of their lives. They never his the proverbial rock bottom, so they had no interest in climbing out. Truth be told, either way, they probably never would.

When they finished high school, they had enough money to move away and start college. He let them. He understood that it was important for them to leave the city, to start over some place new. But they never lost touch with D. He continued booking most of their clients. And when Arafel and Thranduil found out that their parents had moved away, and spent most of their time abroad, they came back. They had careers now, they had money, they bought their own place to live, but they came right back to D’Angelo for drugs. 

D welcomed them back with open arms. But he didn’t want their money. He wanted their bodies. At first they refused, they didn’t sell their bodies any more. He wasn’t offended. But after a few years and several ugly experiences, Thranduil and Arafel realized that legit pills and good coke they could buy, but pure heroin was not so easy to find. D fucked Thranduil first agreeing to Thranduil’s ultimatum that he could have him but not Arafel. Until one day Thranduil was too sick to get out of bed, and Arafel went to see D’ Angelo alone. Thranduil broke half the flat afterward, but he didn’t let go of D’s drugs. And so it goes. They love him. They hate him. They fuck him. And they always come back, eventually. He supplies them with the best dope in town and never forces them to do anything. They never refuse anything he asks of them either. Fair’s fair. 

So Arafel strips slowly but without hesitation to approving hisses from the men and encouraging shouts from some of the women and remains standing in the middle of the room wearing nothing but her heels. 

D takes her hand and leads her towards a chair positioned opposite the U-shaped sofa the rest of the party is lounging on. He unbuttons his shirt and sits legs wide apart. Arafel catches the clue and kneels in front of him undoing his belt and zipper. Of course D does not wear any underwear, he never does, and his already mostly erect cock springs free against his stomach. Arafel licks the underside from the base of his balls to the tip. D hisses putting his hand on the back of her head. She takes him into her mouth and goes half way down before coming back up. After she repeats the motion several times, D pushes her head all the way down to the base and holds her there for about half a minute grinding into her mouth. When he lets her back up, Arafel doesn’t even let go of him just takes a deep breath, and plays with the tip using her tongue. He pushes her back down, then holds her head still between both hands and fucks her mouth, his cock reaching deep into her throat. Arafel holds still. When he slows down, D mutters, “Damn girl, you and your brother have the best mouths”. Arafel looks up at him and smiles as she licks precum of the tip, “That’s why we get the best drugs”. D half laughs, half grins. Arafel puts her mouth around him again. This time when he thrusts into her, he doesn’t even hold her head in place. Arafel, even used to her brother, is not used to the length of time and the force D uses. Her head is pounding, her neck hurts and her throat’s on fire by the time D finally pulls out and shoots semen all over her breasts then forces her to take him into her mouth again and swallow the other half of the load, as he strokes her hair and calls her his good girl. 

Having licked him clean, one of D’s demands, Arafel wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and sits on her heels waiting for further instructions. D’s just laughing, seated, satisfied, repeating, “Damn girl, you’re good… you’re good…” Arafel laughs, “Does that mean I can go?” 

D nods, lifts her up into his lap, gives her a kiss on the cheek and whispers in her ear so that no one else hears, “Tell him I’d love to have you both, together, some day soon.” Which translates into he wants Thranduil here as well because he wants to fuck them. Thranduil asked him to please not do that with Arafel unless he did them both. D agreed, in fact he preferred it. Having them both opened up so many possibilities; D didn’t think he’d ever get bored of them. 

“I will. Thanks, D.” With that, Arafel slips back into her clothes without looking at anybody in the room, partly because she really doesn’t give a shit partly because her mind is exclusively preoccupied with the heroin which is being handed to her; D’s being generous, to be taken as bribe. Within the next three minutes, she is in her car and driving home. 

Thranduil leaves his office around 5:15, well on the way to being dangerously fucked up. He drives with music blasting so he can’t hear his thoughts, or his heart. He arrives at the hotel at 5:35, a 45 minute drive. He calls Melissa, “When are you coming back?” “6:45 exactly.” “Perfect”, he hangs up thinking how the little bitch can miraculously get her shit together when it’s in her best interest to do so, must be an inherited trait. He’s never hated the stupid, egotistical, parasitical lot of them more. He wants to talk to his sister. No, he wants to _be_ with his sister. He spreads two lines on the dashboard with his credit card instead. Sits back and synchs his thundering heart to the beat of the music, both crashing together through his brain. He pops a β-blocker, because he doesn’t want to be just another coke head dead of a heart attack, at least not today. Thranduil is a master of street pharmacology, overdoses and counter-measures are his specialty. 

At 5:45, he is knocking on the door to room #544. The bastard that calls himself his father, in this lifetime, opens the door. And glares at him like he’s an apparition. Or a nightmare. He’s probably both. Thranduil throws on a grin, undeterred, “Hello father, won’t you let me in?” 

Eventually his father staggers away from the door and manages a snippy, “You’re early. Your mother and sister won’t be back for another two hours.” He’s speaking to Thranduil’s back. Thranduil’s made his way to the bar and is making two drinks, a scotch on the rocks for his father and an ice cold vodka for himself.

He turns around handing the glass to his father, “I’m not early, I wanted us to have some time alone.” His voice is low, seductive. His father swallows hard and takes the glass. Thranduil makes sure their fingers touch. It’s like electric shock to his father, but he manages to ask, “Why?” Then he looks at him the shock having worn off and adds, “You’re trashed.”

Thranduil shrugs, leans against the back of a sofa in the over-the-top suite, licks his lips, “Hm… For old times’ sake…”

His father shudders visibly, looks at him asking “What is the game you’re playing”, but only says, “Last time I saw you, you threw me out of your home.”

“That’s because you were insulting Arafel in _our_ home. Whom, by the way, you will never see again.”

“You’re still fucking your sister then”, his father’s replies accompanied with derisive laughter. 

Thranduil doesn’t skip a beat, “Yes, I am.”

“Did she do that to you?”, his father points at the horrible bruises and unhealed bite marks clearly visible on Thranduil’s neck. He didn’t bother trying to make them less obvious in any way today. 

“She did.”

“You’re both fucking sick.” The disgust in his father’s voice is palpable.

“Hm.” Thranduil puts his index finger in his mouth and sucks on it watching his father under lowered eyelashes. 

His father watches him intently. He looks entranced. Thranduil smirks. His father nearly empties his glass in one gulp to shake of the sight of his adopted son, whom he, to his utter disgust, finds that he wants to burry his cock inside, still, now, after all this time. Rape him, subdue him, tear him apart. Just like all those years ago. And when Thranduil was too battered, when he worried that abusing him further may necessitate a trip to the hospital where his injuries would be impossible to explain, he went for his sister. She was easy to hurt as well. 

Thranduil’s voice comes like an echo, “You didn’t think we were sick when you fucked us, daddy.”

His father, exceptionally fit for a man in his mid 60s, turns on him lightning fast, grabs him by the throat and screams inches from his face, “Don’t you fucking talk to me like that, boy.”

Thranduil doesn’t even try to fight him or defend himself, even though he could throw him across the room and split his skull open easily, so easily. Instead he smiles and reaches for his father’s groin, where, as he suspected, he finds a bulge in the shape of his father’s balls and a semi-hard cock. He presses and gropes the man. His father inhales deeply and relaxes the hold on his throat.

“Or when you made us open our mouths for you.” He fully anticipates the tightening of the hand around his throat, which follows. But his father does not remove the hand Thranduil keeps on his cock hardening under increasing pressure and circular movements. 

Suddenly, Thranduil’s head is yanked backwards by his ponytail and his father’s fingers are forcing their way into his mouth. “Did you come here to be reminded that you’re a whore? That you’ll never be anything but a junkie whore? I don’t care what you have. I don’t care about the letters behind your name. I don’t care who respects you, or fears you. You will always be trash.” 

If he could, Thranduil would be dying of laughter. How to explain to this moron to whom appearances are everything that he doesn’t care what he calls him or if it’s true. So he sucks on his fingers and lets him pull him down to his knees between the sofa and himself, and in the brief moments in which both of his father’s hands are busy releasing his now fully erect cock, Thranduil manages to insert, “But I’m the best blow job you’ll ever have, daddy.” A split second later his father thrusts into his mouth. Thranduil’s head hits the sofa behind him and is held there by his father’s hips, his full length buried in his son’s throat. 

As an eleven and twelve year old child, Thranduil used to gag and choke when used like this; now he opens his throat easily. A whore indeed. And while his father holding onto the back of the sofa for extra leverage, in order to inflict maximum pain and discomfort upon his son thrusts hard and without pause into his mouth and throat, Thranduil wonders idly what time it could be. 

And then, like a wish, the door opens, jolly conversation fills the room momentarily before dead, frozen silence descends. Thranduil and his father, balls deep in his son’s throat, are in profile in full view from the entrance to the suite. 

The father moves into action first. Still completely hard, he pulls up his trousers, securing the zipper, buttons and belt and moves towards his wife, daughter and Isaac. Chaos ensues. Their mother becomes hysterical, screaming at her husband not to touch her, screaming at Thranduil, who is now sitting on the floor thoroughly amused, and finally running off into one of the bedrooms in tears, her husband after her giving Thranduil a murderous look.

Thranduil shrugs, then gets up, performs a mock bow towards Melissa and Isaac, and steps out the door with a “Have a nice evening, dear family.” 

Melissa runs after him. She catches him three doors down in the middle of snorting coke off his keys. She turns bright red, stares at the floor, fumbles with her words. 

He snaps at her, “What?!”

“I…I…I just wanted to thank you.”

Thranduil waves her off with his hand, turns to go.

“Wait…please…”, Melissa’s voice is near breaking. He turns around despite himself, keys just leaving his nose again. 

This time she manages not to look at the floor, “How did you get him to do that?”

“Your pretty little head can’t put that together?” He’s in no mood to be kind. “Did it look like something he’d never done before?”

Melissa stares at him for too long, and he’s turning to leave laughing the laughter of the righteous or the completely mad, when she finally understands, and hands to her mouth half-speaks half-whispers, “Oh my God… Oh my God… How long?”

“Since we were ten. _That’s_ the best kept secret in the family.” He’s stopped laughing. 

“You mean mother…”, she doesn’t finish the sentence.

“Yea, the bitch knew.”

They’re six feet away now, and Melissa all of a sudden runs up to him and hugs him. Thranduil doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t want to be touched. He doesn’t want to be pitied. He doesn’t want to be having this conversation any more. He removes her arms and gently pushes her away from him. And she doesn’t try to approach him again. She only asks him, “Why did you do it?”

“Because it was effective.”

Melissa nods. Because not only is Thranduil, and by extension his sister, so much worse than Isaac, but their father, and mother, are so much worse then them both. She thanks him again then seeing that he wants to go, turns back towards room #544.


End file.
